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Emergence of PT-symmetry breaking in open quantum systems
by Julian Huber, Peter Kirton, Stefan Rotter, Peter Rabl
This Submission thread is now published as
Submission summary
| Authors (as registered SciPost users): | Julian Huber · Peter Kirton · Peter Rabl |
| Submission information | |
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| Preprint Link: | scipost_202008_00009v2 (pdf) |
| Date accepted: | 2020-10-08 |
| Date submitted: | 2020-09-28 15:12 |
| Submitted by: | Huber, Julian |
| Submitted to: | SciPost Physics |
| Ontological classification | |
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| Academic field: | Physics |
| Specialties: |
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| Approach: | Theoretical |
Abstract
The effect of PT-symmetry breaking in coupled systems with balanced gain and loss has recently attracted considerable attention and has been demonstrated in various photonic, electrical and mechanical systems in the classical regime. Here we generalize the definition of PT symmetry to finite-dimensional open quantum systems, which are described by a Markovian master equation. Specifically, we show that the invariance of this master equation under a certain symmetry transformation implies the existence of stationary states with preserved and broken parity symmetry. As the dimension of the Hilbert space grows, the transition between these two limiting phases becomes increasingly sharp and the classically expected PT-symmetry breaking transition is recovered. This quantum-to-classical correspondence allows us to establish a common theoretical framework to identify and accurately describe PT-symmetry breaking effects in a large variety of physical systems, operated both in the classical and quantum regimes.
List of changes
Extension of the discussion about the difference between our symmetry and particle-hole exchange symmetry.
Extended discussion of the differences between earlier works and the presented one.
References suggest by the referees were added.
Published as SciPost Phys. 9, 052 (2020)