Steady states and non‐Hermitian dynamics

A. H. McDonald, Ryo Hanai, Aashish A. Clerk

Himanshu Badhani, C. M. Chandrashekar

Pietro Brighi, Marko Ljubotina, Federico Roccati +1 more

Non-Hermitian many-body localization (NH MBL) has emerged as a possible scenario for stable localization in open systems, as suggested by spectral indicators identifying a putative transition for finite system sizes. In this work, we shift the focus to dynamical probes, specifically the steady-state spin current, to investigate transport properties in a disordered, non-Hermitian XXZ spin chain. Through exact diagonalization for small systems and tensor-network methods for larger chains, we demonstrate that the steady-state current remains finite and decays exponentially with disorder strength, showing no evidence of a transition up to disorder values far beyond the previously claimed critical point. Our results reveal a stark discrepancy between spectral indicators, which suggest localization, and transport behavior, which indicates delocalization. This highlights the importance of dynamical observables in characterizing NH MBL and suggests that traditional spectral measures may not fully capture the physics of non-Hermitian systems. Additionally, we observe a noncommutativity of limits in system size and time, further complicating the interpretation of finite-size studies. These findings challenge the existence of NH MBL in the studied model and underscore the need for alternative approaches to understanding localization in non-Hermitian settings.

Walter Dittrich, Martin Reuter

Yixiao Huang, Heng-Na Xiong, Wei Zhong +2 more

We study the dynamical properties in a non-Hermitian Bose-Hubbard dimer and show that the steady state consists mostly of the eigenstate whose eigenvalue has the largest imaginary part. A sharp phase transition occurs in the steady state and the phase transition occurs for a finite particle number, not for infinite ones, in contrast to the Hermitian system. We also investigate the quantum Fisher information and entanglement in two different phases. The results show that the steady state in the Josephson oscillation regime is fully N -particle entangled and the corresponding parameter sensitivity approaches the Heisenberg limit. In the self-trapping regime, the parameter sensitivity just scales as the shot-noise limit. Moreover, quantum Fisher information of the steady state is robust to the initial state, which indicates that the non-Hermitian dynamics takes more advantage than the Hermitian one for quantum metrology.

A. McDonald, Ryo Hanai, Aashish A. Clerk

While the band theory of non-Hermitian Hamiltonians and the dynamics they generate have received considerable recent interest, the quantum steady states of such models remain largely unexplored. Here, the authors systematically characterize such states for fermions and bosons using an open quantum system approach. Surprisingly, these steady states exhibit features that cannot be extracted readily from the non-Hermitian Hamiltonian. This includes a macroscopic length scale which characterizes the steady-state occupation but differs from the localization length of the eigenvectors.