The non-Hermitian model exhibits counterintuitive phenomena that are not observed in the Hermitian counterparts. To probe the competition between non-Hermitian and Hermitian interacting components of the Hamiltonian, we focus on a system containing non-Hermitian $XY$ spin chain and Hermitian Kaplan-Shekhtman-Entin-Aharony (KSEA) interactions along with the transverse magnetic field. We show that the non-Hermitian model can be an effective Hamiltonian of a Hermitian $XX$ spin-$\frac{1}{2}$ with KSEA interaction and a local magnetic field that interacts with local and nonlocal reservoirs. The analytical expression of the energy spectrum divides the system parameters into two regimes: in one region, the strength of Hermitian KSEA interactions dominates over the imaginary non-Hermiticity parameter, while in the other, the opposite is true. In the former situation, we demonstrate that the nearest-neighbor entanglement and its derivative can identify quantum critical lines with the variation of the magnetic field. In this domain, we determine a surface where the entanglement vanishes, similar to the factorization surface, known in the Hermitian case. On the other hand, when non-Hermiticity parameters dominate, we report the exceptional and critical points where the energy gap vanishes and illustrate that bipartite entanglement is capable of detecting these transitions as well. Going beyond this scenario, when the ground state evolves after a sudden quench with the transverse magnetic field, both the rate function and the fluctuation of bipartite entanglement quantified via its second moment can detect critical lines generated without quenching dynamics.
The non-Hermitian model exhibits counterintuitive phenomena that are not observed in the Hermitian counterparts. To probe the competition between non-Hermitian and Hermitian interacting components of the Hamiltonian, we focus on a system containing non-Hermitian XY spin chain and Hermitian Kaplan-Shekhtman-Entin-Aharony (KSEA) interactions along with the transverse magnetic field. We show that the non-Hermitian model can be an effective Hamiltonian of a Hermitian XX spin-21 with KSEA interaction and a local magnetic field that interacts with local and nonlocal reservoirs. The analytical expression of the energy spectrum divides the system parameters into two regimes: in one region, the strength of Hermitian KSEA interactions dominates over the imaginary non-Hermiticity parameter, while in the other, the opposite is true. In the former situation, we demonstrate that the nearest-neighbor entanglement and its derivative can identify quantum critical lines with the variation of the magnetic field. In this domain, we determine a surface where the entanglement vanishes, similar to the factorization surface, known in the Hermitian case. On the other hand, when non-Hermiticity parameters dominate, we report the exceptional and critical points where the energy gap vanishes and illustrate that bipartite entanglement is capable of detecting these transitions as well. Going beyond this scenario, when the ground state evolves after a sudden quench with the transverse magnetic field, both the rate function and the fluctuation of bipartite entanglement quantified via its second moment can detect critical lines generated without quenching dynamics.
In the traditional quantum theory, one-dimensional quantum spin models possess a factorization surface where the ground states are fully separable and have vanishing bipartite as well as multipartite entanglement. We report that in the non-Hermitian counterpart of these models, these factorization surfaces either can predict the exceptional points where the unbroken-to-broken transition occurs or can guarantee the spectrum to be real, thereby suggesting a procedure to reveal the unbroken phase. We first analytically demonstrate it for the nearest-neighbor rotation-time- (RT) symmetric XY model with uniform and alternating transverse magnetic fields, referred to as the iATXY model. Exact diagonalization techniques are then employed to establish this fact for the RT-symmetric XYZ model with short- and long-range interactions as well as for the long-range iATXY model. Moreover, we show that although the factorization surface prescribes the unbroken phase of the non-Hermitian model, the bipartite nearest-neighbor entanglement at the exceptional point is nonvanishing.
We study the quantum entanglement and quantum phase transition of the non-Hermitian anisotropic spin-21 XY model and XXZ model with the staggered imaginary field by analytical methods and numerical exact diagonalization, respectively. Various entanglement measures, including concurrence, negativity, mutual information, and quantum coherence, and both biorthogonal and self-normal quantities are investigated. Both the biorthogonal and self-normal entanglement quantities, except the biorthogonal concurrence, are found to be capable of detecting the first-order and PT transitions in the XXZ model, as well as the Ising and RT transitions in the XY model. In addition, we introduce the unconstrained concurrence and demonstrate its effectiveness in detecting these transitions. On the other hand, the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) transition in the XXZ model is revealed through concurrence and negativity at small non-Hermiticity strengths. Notably, the critical points observed in the Hermitian limit evolve into exceptional points as the strength of the non-Hermiticity increases. Furthermore, we find that the first-order transition survives up to a higher non-Hermiticity strength compared to the BKT transition within the PT-symmetric regime of the XXZ model.
Abstract In this manuscript, we explore the properties of a non-Hermitian spin-1/2 XY model subjected to alternating imaginary and transverse magnetic fields. Focusing on a two-spin system, we systematically construct the ground state phase diagram and provide an exact calculation of the ground state entanglement via the Negativity measure. Our findings reveal that, within eigenstates influenced by the anisotropy parameter, real magnetic fields, and imaginary magnetic fields, the anisotropy parameter significantly enhances entanglement, whereas the real magnetic field tends to diminish or even annihilate it. Notably, in the ΡΤ-symmetry broken phase, quantum entanglement demonstrates increased resilience to variations in the real magnetic field with the strengthening of the imaginary magnetic field. For eigenstates governed purely by the imaginary magnetic field, we observe that the two-spin entanglement remains maximal (i.e., value of 1) within the ΡΤ-symmetry region, while it gradually declines in the ΡΤ-symmetry broken region as the parameter η0 decreases. An intriguing observation is that the first derivative of the Negativity shows non-analytic behavior at the critical points, highlighting the role of Negativity as a reliable and effective indicator of phase transitions in this non-Hermitian system.
Non-Hermitian spin systems have attracted extensive interest due to their unconventional magnetic properties, rich entanglement resources, and unusual quantum criticality phenomena. In this paper, based on the exact solution of a one-dimensional non-Hermitian spin-1/2 XY model with rotation-time-reversal (RT) symmetry [X. Z. Zhang et al., Phys. Rev. A 87, 012114 (2013)], we study the ground-state energy density, magnetization, correlation functions, quantum entanglement, and correlation in RT-symmetric and RT-broken phases as well as their characteristics at the exceptional point. We find that the energy density rises faster with the non-Hermitian parameter $|\ensuremath{\gamma}|$ in the symmetric region than in the broken one and is elevated rapidly at the exceptional point, and the decay of magnetization has similar results. We analyze the effect of $\ensuremath{\gamma}$ on the system and find that the energy density decreases linearly with the external magnetic field h for $\ensuremath{\gamma}>0,$ while it is bifurcated when $\ensuremath{\gamma}=0$. In addition, the behaviors of the energy density indicate that the phase transition caused by symmetry breaking is second order, which is further demonstrated by the magnetization, quantum entanglement, etc. The numerical results of the correlation functions surprisingly indicate that the RT-broken phase has quasi-long-range order, which is quite different from the Hermitian XY model. Especially, the crossover behavior of the ground-state entanglement shows that it increases with $\ensuremath{\gamma}$ in the symmetric region, which is opposite to the case of the broken one, and its maximum always appears at the exceptional point. The above behaviors at the phase boundary are actually ascribed to the fierce competition between $\ensuremath{\gamma}$ and h, which results in a rapid decline of magnetization and the appearance of the maximum of entanglement.
Identifying equilibrium criticalities and phases from the dynamics of a system, known as a dynamical quantum phase transition (DQPT), is a challenging task when relying solely on local observables. We exhibit that the experimentally accessible two-body Bell operator, originally designed to detect nonlocal correlations in quantum states, serves as an effective witness of DQPTs in a long-range (LR) XY spin chain subjected to a magnetic field, where the interaction strength decays as a power law. Following a sudden quench of the system parameters, the Bell operator between nearest-neighbor spins exhibits a distinct drop at the critical boundaries. In this study, we consider two quenching protocols, namely sudden quenches of the magnetic field strength and the interaction fall-off rate. This pronounced behavior defines a threshold, distinguishing intra-phase from inter-phase quenches, remaining valid regardless of the strength of long-range interactions, anisotropy, and system sizes. Comparative analyses further demonstrate that conventional classical and quantum correlators, including entanglement, fail to capture this transition during dynamics.
In this manuscript, we study the non-Hermitian spin-1/2 XY model in the presence of the alternating, imaginary and transverse magnetic fields. For the two-site spin system, we solve exactly the energy spectrum and phase diagram, also calculate the ground-state and thermal entanglements by using the concept of the concurrence. It is found that the two-site concurrence in the eigenstate which only depends on the imaginary magnetic field η is always equal to one in the region of PT symmetry, while it decreases with η in the PT-symmetric broken region. Especially, the concurrence shows the non-analytic behavior at the exceptional point, and the same is true in the case of the biorthogonal basis, which indicates that the concurrence can characterize the phase transition in this non-Hermitian system. The interesting thing is that η weakens the thermal entanglement when the system is isotropic and enhances the entanglement when the system becomes the Ising model. For the one-dimensional spin chain, the magnetization and entanglement are further studied by using the two-spin cluster mean-field approximation. The results show that their variations have opposite trends with the magnetic fields. Moreover, the system exists the first-order quantum phase transitions for some anisotropic parameters in the PT-symmetry region, and the entanglement changes suddenly at the quantum phase transition point.