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arXiv:2609.05391

Non-reciprocally interacting Ornstein-Uhlenbeck processes: Exceptional points, Anomalous relaxation, Pseudo-equilibrium and Boundary refrigeration

Soumya Kanti Pal, Shamik Gupta

cond-mat.stat-mechquant-phSubmitted Sep 4, 2026• Announced Sep 7, 2026
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Abstract

Non-reciprocal interactions are ubiquitous in active, biological, and disordered systems, generically driving them out of equilibrium. Here, we introduce a hierarchy of non-reciprocally interacting Ornstein-Uhlenbeck (NROU) models governed by a tunable non-reciprocity parameter $g$. At a special point $g=g^*$, the drift matrix becomes non-diagonalizable, realizing exceptional points (EP's) of different orders, where eigenvalues and eigenvectors simultaneously coalesce. The hierarchy encompasses non-reciprocally coupled dimers, their disordered counterparts, and a many-body chain exactly mapping onto the paradigmatic Hatano-Nelson model in the arena of non-Hermitian quantum systems. For the disordered model, we show that the distribution of the EP location $g^*$ across disorder realizations develops a universal edge singularity precisely at the clean-system EP, and is manifestly non-self-averaging. Across all models, we find that at the EP, the usual exponential relaxation of the autocorrelation and covariance functions is dressed by a polynomial-in-time prefactor whose degree is set by the order of the EP and whose detailed structure encodes the spatial architecture of the chain. At complete asymmetry, the many-body chain exhibits ``pseudo-equilibrium'': its steady-state distribution factorizes into equilibrium-like single-particle measures despite a nonzero steady-state current. Moreover, the $N$-particle interacting system decomposes into $N/2$ independent complex OU processes. Finally, using the Harada-Sasa relation, we obtain a closed-form expression for the total steady-state heat dissipation and uncover a boundary refrigeration effect, in which the boundary particles switch from acting as a hot to a cold reservoir as the non-reciprocity is tuned.

Comments
25 pages, 9 figures

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Non-reciprocal interactions are ubiquitous in active, biological, and disordered systems, generically driving them out of equilibrium. Here, we introduce a hierarchy of non-reciprocally interacting Ornstein-Uhlenbeck (NROU) models governed by a tunable non-reciprocity parameter ggg. At a special point g=g∗g=g^*g=g∗, the drift matrix becomes non-diagonalizable, realizing exceptional points (EP's) of different orders, where eigenvalues and eigenvectors simultaneously coalesce. The hierarchy encompasses non-reciprocally coupled dimers, their disordered counterparts, and a many-body chain exactly mapping onto the paradigmatic Hatano-Nelson model in the arena of non-Hermitian quantum systems. For the disordered model, we show that the distribution of the EP location g∗g^*g∗ across disorder realizations develops a universal edge singularity precisely at the clean-system EP, and is manifestly non-self-averaging. Across all models, we find that at the EP, the usual exponential relaxation of the autocorrelation and covariance functions is dressed by a polynomial-in-time prefactor whose degree is set by the order of the EP and whose detailed structure encodes the spatial architecture of the chain. At complete asymmetry, the many-body chain exhibits ``pseudo-equilibrium'': its steady-state distribution factorizes into equilibrium-like single-particle measures despite a nonzero steady-state current. Moreover, the NNN-particle interacting system decomposes into N/2N/2N/2 independent complex OU processes. Finally, using the Harada-Sasa relation, we obtain a closed-form expression for the total steady-state heat dissipation and uncover a boundary refrigeration effect, in which the boundary particles switch from acting as a hot to a cold reservoir as the non-reciprocity is tuned.
Processes fundamental to everyday experience — from activity in networks of neurons to evolution of ecosystem — operate far from equilibrium to sustain the dynamics essential for life, computation, and complex adaptive behavior. Non-reciprocal interactions provide a generic route to such nonequilibrium behavior: the influence of agent A on agent B differs from that of B on A. Neural circuits, ecosystems, chemical reaction networks, social interactions, and open quantum systems often realize this asymmetry such that rich collective dynamics can occur. In particular, non-reciprocity often leads to the emergence of persistent, time-dependent many-body phases driven by non-reciprocity. A distinctive feature of non-reciprocal phase transitions is that they may occur at critical exceptional points, where critical slowing down coincides with an existing zero mode associated with broken continuous symmetry. In this thesis, we explore the broad landscape of phases and phase transitions enabled by non-reciprocity. We are especially interested in how generalized exceptional points organize dynamics and response in non-equilibrium many-body systems, how geometry and boundary conditions reshape collective behavior in spatially extended non-reciprocal media, and how symmetry and topology constrain the possible time-dependent phases and critical phenomena in multi-population systems of interacting agents. Together, these results provide a framework for non-reciprocal phase transitions and motivate future tests across experimental settings.
The out of equilibrium dynamics of the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model (SYK), comprising NNN Majoranas with random all-to-all four-body interactions, minimally coupled to a Markovian bath modeled by the Lindblad formalism, displays intriguing nontrivial features. In particular, the decay rate towards the steady state is a non-monotonic function of the bath coupling μμμ, and an analogue of the Loschmidt echo for dissipative quantum systems undergoes a first order dynamical phase transitions that eventually becomes a crossover for sufficiently large μμμ. We provide evidence that these features have their origin in the presence of exceptional points in the purely real eigenvalues of the SYK Liouvillian closest to the zero eigenvalue associated with the steady state. An analytic calculation at small NNN, supported by numerical results for larger NNN, reveals that the value of μ∼0.1μ\sim 0.1μ∼0.1 at which the exceptional point corresponding to the longest living modes occurs is close to a local maximum of the decay rate. This value marks the start of a region of anomalous equilibration where the relaxation rate diminishes as the coupling to the bath becomes stronger. Moreover, the mentioned change from transition to crossover in the Loschmidt echo occurs at a larger μ∼0.3μ\sim 0.3μ∼0.3 corresponding with a proliferation of exceptional points in the low energy limit of the Liouvillian spectrum. We expect these features to be generic in the approach to equilibrium in quantum strongly interacting many-body Liouvillians.
The exploration of the effect of non-Hermitian (NH) in quantum systems is gaining renewed momentum as a result of the recent progress in experiments. It has been indicated that the ability to engineer the orders of exceptional points (EPs) can be fundamental to its applications in quantum control, such as accelerating entanglement generation; however, an initial survey of the interactions between different orders of EPs is still missing. In this work, we try to partially address this issue by employing a non-reciprocally coupled cavity system which can be experimentally realizable with a two-dimensional reconfigurable NH gauged laser array. With deliberate design, our systems display both second and third orders of EPs. The sign of a novel, purely quantum continuous entanglement phase transition is observed, which reveals how multi-EP interactions alter entanglement dynamics across different regimes while maintaining accelerated generation. Our findings reveil the genuinely quantum NH physics of higher-order EPs, which has opened up a new avenue for future investigations of the higher-order degeneracy application and the dynamic phase transitions of quantum systems.
Diffusion, dephasing and non-Hermiticity collaborate and realize an unconventional entanglement dynamics in a disordered, interacting and asymmetric (non-reciprocal) quantum media. Taking the Hatano-Nelson model as a concrete example, we first consider how diffusion occurs in a non-Hermitian disordered system for demonstraing that it is very different from the Hermitian case. Interestingly, a cascade like diffusion process as in the Hermitian case is suppressed in the clean limit and at weak disorder, while it revives in the vicinity of the localization-delocalization transition. Based on this observation, we then analyze how the entanglement entropy of the system evolves in the interacting non-Hermitian model, revealing its non-monotonic evolution in time. We clarify the different roles of dephasing in the time evolution of entanglement entropy in Hermitian and non-Hermitian systems, and show that the many-body dynamics is governed by a principle different from the Hermitian case. The size dependence of the results suggests with the increase of disorder, a (reentrant) area-volume-area law crossover of the maximal entanglement entropy. To analyze the effects of disorder on a firm basis, using the Hermitian limit as a benchmark, we employ a quasi-periodic disorder (Aubry-Andr\'{e} model) in the analyses.
We study a quadratic open SSH chain with a single-site loss and show that the many-body fermionic Lindblad problem admits an exact reduction to a finite non-Hermitian one-body matrix with a rank-one imaginary impurity. Its rapidities generate the complete Liouvillian spectrum and reveal three mechanisms governing the slowest relaxation. At weak loss, decay is selected by the clean local spectral weight at the lossy site, yielding the generic law ΔL∼γN−3Δ_{\mathcal L}\simγN^{-3}ΔL​∼γN−3 and, in the topological regime, exponentially smaller edge-controlled gaps. At intermediate loss, a centered bulk-loss geometry reaches an exact exceptional point on the real-γγγ axis. Symmetry-related rapidity pairs coalesce simultaneously, including the pair at the lower rapidity edge. Exact real-space dynamics at this lower-edge exceptional point exhibits a polynomially enhanced exponential tail, whereas a matched high-energy control with the same parity-even one-body decay edge but no lower-edge defectiveness remains nearly exponential. At strong loss, one ultrafast defect mode separates from an active slow sector governed by a cut-chain Zeno problem, giving ΔL∼γ−1Δ_{\mathcal L}\simγ^{-1}ΔL​∼γ−1 up to a geometry-dependent prefactor. The full finite fermionic Liouvillian spectrum, including its operator-parity sectors and subset-sum structure, is statistics-specific. By contrast, the elementary one-body decay spectrum and the three associated mechanisms are governed by a finite-dimensional linear drift matrix, so their spectral and dynamical signatures can also be accessed in bosonic and classical-wave platforms engineered to realize the same effective matrix. These results establish how topology, defect geometry, and local dissipation jointly organize long-time relaxation in an open dimerized lattice.
We study the Hatano-Nelson model, i.e., a one-dimensional non-Hermitian chain of spinless fermions with nearest-neighbor nonreciprocal hopping, in the presence of repulsive nearest-neighbor interactions. At half filling, we find two PT\mathcal{PT}PT transitions, as the interaction strength increases. The first transition is marked by an exceptional point between the first and the second excited state in a finite-size system and is a first-order symmetry-breaking transition into a charge-density wave regime. Persistent currents characteristic of the Hatano-Nelson model abruptly vanish at the transition. The second transition happens at a critical interaction strength that scales with the system size and can thus only be observed in finite-size systems. It is characterized by a collapse of all energy eigenvalues onto the real axis. We further show that in a strong interaction regime, but away from half filling, the many-body spectrum shows point gaps with nontrivial winding numbers, akin to the topological properties of the single-particle spectrum of the Hatano-Nelson chain, which indicates the skin effect of extensive many-body eigenstates under open boundary conditions. Our results can be applied to other models such as the non-Hermitian Su-Schrieffer-Heeger-type model and contribute to an understanding of fermionic many-body systems with non-Hermitian Hamiltonians.