The open quantum system can be described by either a Lindblad master equation or a non-Hermitian Hamiltonian (NHH). However, these two descriptions usually have different exceptional points (EPs), associated with the degeneracies in the open quantum system. Here, considering a dissipative quantum Rabi model, we study the spectral features of EPs in these two descriptions and explore their connections. We find that, although the EPs in these two descriptions are usually different, the EPs of NHH will be consistent with the EPs of master equation in the weak coupling regime. Further, we find that the quantum Fisher information (QFI), which measures the statistical distance between quantum states, can be used as a signature for the appearance of EPs. Our study may give a theoretical guidance for exploring the properties of EPs in open quantum systems.
Exceptional points (EPs), indicative of parity-time (PT) symmetry breaking, play a central role in non-Hermitian physics, yet most studies begin from deliberately engineered effective Hamiltonians whose parameters are tuned to exhibit exceptional behavior. In realistic open quantum systems, however, dynamics are governed by Lindblad superoperators whose spectral structure is high-dimensional, symmetry-constrained, and not obviously reducible to minimal non-Hermitian models. A general framework for discovering exceptional dynamics directly from microscopic dissipative models has been lacking. Here we introduce a symmetry-resolved approach for identifying and characterizing exceptional points directly from the full Liouvillian generator. Correlated dissipation induces graph symmetries that decompose Liouville space into low-dimensional invariant sectors, within which minimal non-Hermitian blocks govern the onset of EPs and PT-breaking behavior. We further introduce a numerical diagnostic - the exceptional-point strength
E - based on eigenvector conditioning, which quantifies proximity to defective dynamics without requiring analytic reduction. Applied to tight-binding models with correlated dephasing and relaxation, the method reproduces analytically predicted exceptional seams and reveals universal scaling of
E near EP manifolds. More broadly, the framework enables systematic discovery of hidden exceptional structure in complex or high-dimensional open systems and is naturally compatible with matrix-free and tensor-network implementations for scalable many-body applications.
Exceptional points (EPs) occur in non-Hermitian systems where eigenvalues and eigenvectors coalesce. In open quantum systems, EPs are typically studied via non-Hermitian effective Hamiltonians or Liouvillians, but these omit the full generality of quantum dynamics, which requires description using quantum channels. Here, we introduce a general strategy for generating quantum-channel EPs in the single-qubit setting. We show that quantum channels naturally fall into two distinct phases, purely real or complex-conjugate eigenvalues, without the need of enforcing additional symmetries, and interpolating between different phases induces a phase transition where EPs can emerge. We experimentally simulate such channels on a nuclear magnetic resonance quantum computer, observing second-order quantum-channel EPs with 93% fidelity, and extend the approach to three channels to uncover exceptional lines and a third-order quantum-channel EP. Our results promise potential applications from enhanced quantum sensing to quantum control, such as Jordan-chain mediated asymmetric conversion.