No Arabic abstract
Linear response theory plays a prominent role in various fields of physics and provides us with extensive information about the thermodynamics and dynamics of quantum and classical systems. Here we develop a general theory for the linear response in non-Hermitian systems with non-unitary dynamics and derive a modified Kubo formula for the generalized susceptibility for arbitrary (Hermitian and non-Hermitian) system and perturbation. As an application, we evaluate the dynamical response of a non-Hermitian, one-dimensional Dirac model with imaginary and real masses, perturbed by a time-dependent electric field. The model has a rich phase diagram, and in particular, features a tachyon phase, where excitations travel faster than an effective speed of light. Surprisingly, we find that the dc conductivity of tachyons is finite, and the optical sum rule is exactly satisfied for all masses. Our results highlight the peculiar properties of the Kubo formula for non-Hermitian systems and are applicable for a large variety of settings.
Quantum gases of light, as photons or polariton condensates in optical microcavities, are collective quantum systems enabling a tailoring of dissipation from e.g. cavity loss. This makes them a tool to study dissipative phases, an emerging subject in quantum manybody physics. Here we experimentally demonstrate a non-Hermitian phase transition of a photon Bose-Einstein condensate to a new dissipative phase, characterized by a biexponential decay of the condensates second-order coherence. The phase transition occurs due to the emergence of an exceptional point in the quantum gas. While Bose-Einstein condensation is usually connected to ordinary lasing by a smooth crossover, the observed phase transition separates the novel, biexponential phase from both lasing and an intermediate, oscillatory condensate regime. Our findings pave the way for studies of a wide class of dissipative quantum phases, for instance in topological or lattice systems.
We introduce a Ramsey pulse scheme which extracts the non-Hermitian Hamiltonian associated to an arbitrary Lindblad dynamics. We propose a realted protocol to measure via interferometry a generalised Loschmidt echo of a generic state evolving in time with the non-Hermitian Hamiltonian itself, and we apply the scheme to a one-dimensional weakly interacting Bose gas coupled to a stochastic atomic impurity. The Loschmidt echo is mapped into a functional integral from which we calculate the long-time decohering dynamics at arbitrary impurity strengths. For strong dissipation we uncover the phenomenology of a quantum many-body Zeno effect: corrections to the decoherence exponent resulting from the impurity self-energy becomes purely imaginary, in contrast to the regime of small dissipation where they instead enhance the decay of quantum coherences. Our results illustrate the prospects for experiments employing Ramsey interferometry to study dissipative quantum impurities in condensed matter and cold atoms systems.
In computing electric conductivity based on the Kubo formula, the vertex corrections describe such effects as anisotropic scattering and quantum interference and are important to quantum transport properties. These vertex corrections are obtained by solving Bethe-Salpeter equations, which can become numerically intractable when a large number of k-points and multiple bands are involved. We introduce a non-iterative approach to the vertex correction based on rank factorization of the impurity vertices, which significantly alleviate the computational burden. We demonstrate that this method can be implemented along with effective Hamiltonians extracted from electronic structure calculations on perfect crystals, thereby enabling quantitative analysis of quantum effects in electron conduction for real materials.
We report on the experimental realization and detection of dynamical currents in a spin-textured lattice in momentum space. Collective tunneling is implemented via cavity-assisted Raman scattering of photons by a spinor Bose-Einstein condensate into an optical cavity. The photon field inducing the tunneling processes is subject to cavity dissipation, resulting in effective directional dynamics in a non-Hermitian setting. We observe that the individual tunneling events are superradiant in nature and locally resolve them in the lattice by performing real-time, frequency-resolved measurements of the leaking cavity field. The results can be extended to a regime exhibiting a cascade of currents and finite correlations between multiple lattice sites, where numerical simulations provide further understanding of the dynamics. Our observations showcase dynamical tunneling in momentum-space lattices and provide prospects to realize dynamical gauge fields in driven-dissipative settings.
Recently, topological phases in non-Hermitian systems have attracted much attention because non-Hermiticity sometimes gives rise to unique phases with no Hermitian counterparts. Non-Hermitian Bloch Hamiltonians can always be mapped to doubled Hermitianized Hamiltonians with chiral symmetry, which enables us to utilize the existing framework for Hermitian systems into the classification of non-Hermitian topological phases. While this strategy succeeded in the topological classification of non-Hermitian Bloch Hamiltonians in the presence of internal symmetries, the generalization of symmetry indicators -- a way to efficiently diagnose topological phases -- to non-Hermitian systems is still elusive. In this work, we study a theory of symmetry indicators for non-Hermitian systems. We define space group symmetries of non-Hermitian Bloch Hamiltonians as ones of the doubled Hermitianized Hamiltonians. Consequently, symmetry indicator groups for chiral symmetric Hermitian systems are equivalent to those for non-Hermitian systems. Based on this equivalence, we list symmetry indicator groups for non-Hermitian systems in the presence of space group symmetries. We also discuss the physical implications of symmetry indicators for some symmetry classes. Furthermore, explicit formulas of symmetry indicators for spinful electronic systems are included in appendices.