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Volume-to-Area Law Entanglement Transition in a non-Hermitian Free Fermionic Chain
by Youenn Le Gal, Xhek Turkeshi, Marco Schirò
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Submission summary
| Authors (as registered SciPost users): | Youenn Le Gal · Marco Schirò · Xhek Turkeshi |
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| Preprint Link: | https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.11937v3 (pdf) |
| Date accepted: | 2023-04-03 |
| Date submitted: | 2023-02-24 18:28 |
| Submitted by: | Le Gal, Youenn |
| Submitted to: | SciPost Physics |
| Ontological classification | |
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| Academic field: | Physics |
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| Approach: | Theoretical |
Abstract
We consider the dynamics of the non-Hermitian Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model arising as the no-click limit of a continuously monitored free fermion chain where particles and holes are measured on two sublattices. The model has $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetry, which we show to spontaneously break as a function of the strength of measurement backaction, resulting in a spectral transition where quasiparticles acquire a finite lifetime in patches of the Brillouin zone. We compute the entanglement entropy's dynamics in the thermodynamic limit and demonstrate an entanglement transition between volume-law and area-law scaling, which we characterize analytically. Interestingly we show that the entanglement transition and the $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetry breaking do not coincide, the former occurring when the entire decay spectrum of the quasiparticle becomes gapped.
List of changes
Footnote added to clarify the framework in which the work is done.
Published as SciPost Phys. 14, 138 (2023)