Physical review. B./Physical review. B
Full counting statistics across the entanglement phase transition of non-Hermitian Hamiltonians with charge conservation
Tian-Gang Zhou, Yi-Neng Zhou, Pengfei Zhang
Abstract
Performing quantum measurements produces not only the expectation value of a physical observable $O$ but also the probability distribution $P(o)$ of all possible outcomes $o$. The full counting statistics (FCS) $Z(\ensuremath{\phi},O)\ensuremath{\equiv}{\ensuremath{\sum}}_{o}{e}^{i\ensuremath{\phi}o}P(o)$, a Fourier transform of this distribution, contains the complete information of the measurement outcome. In this work, we study the FCS of ${Q}_{A}$, the charge operator in subsystem $A$, for one-dimensional systems described by non-Hermitian Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev-like models, which are solvable in the large-$N$ limit. In both the volume-law entangled phase for interacting systems and the critical phase for noninteracting systems, the conformal symmetry emerges, which gives $F(\ensuremath{\phi},{Q}_{A})\ensuremath{\equiv}lnZ(\ensuremath{\phi},{Q}_{A})\ensuremath{\sim}{\ensuremath{\phi}}^{2}ln|A|$. In short-range entangled phases, the FCS shows area-law behavior which can be approximated as $F(\ensuremath{\phi},{Q}_{A})\ensuremath{\sim}(1\ensuremath{-}cos\ensuremath{\phi})|\ensuremath{\partial}A|$ for $\ensuremath{\zeta}\ensuremath{\gg}J$, regardless of the presence of interactions. Our results suggest the FCS is a universal probe of entanglement phase transitions in non-Hermitian systems with conserved charges, which does not require the introduction of multiple replicas. We also discuss the consequences of discrete symmetry, long-range hopping, and generalizations to higher dimensions.