Deconstructing effective non-Hermitian dynamics in quadratic bosonic Hamiltonians

• Published in: New journal of physics Vol. 22; no. 8; pp. 83004 - 83039
• Main Authors: Flynn, Vincent P, Cobanera, Emilio, Viola, Lorenza
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Bristol IOP Publishing 01.08.2020
• Subjects: Boundary conditions; Chains; dynamical stability; Eigenvalues; Evolution; Hamiltonian functions; Krein stability theory; non-Hermitian quantum mechanics; open quantum systems; Parameters; Phase diagrams; Phase transitions; Physics; PTsymmetry; quadratic bosonic Hamiltonians; Quantum mechanics; Stability; symmetry; Transport properties
• ISSN: 1367-2630; 1367-2630
• DOI: 10.1088/1367-2630/ab9e87

Unlike their fermionic counterparts, the dynamics of Hermitian quadratic bosonic Hamiltonians are governed by a generally non-Hermitian Bogoliubov-de Gennes effective Hamiltonian. This underlying non-Hermiticity gives rise to a dynamically stable regime, whereby all observables undergo bounded evolution in time, and a dynamically unstable one, whereby evolution is unbounded for at least some observables. We show that stability-to-instability transitions may be classified in terms of a suitably generalized PT symmetry, which can be broken when diagonalizability is lost at exceptional points in parameter space, but also when degenerate real eigenvalues split off the real axis while the system remains diagonalizable. By leveraging tools from Krein stability theory in indefinite inner-product spaces, we introduce an indicator of stability phase transitions, which naturally extends the notion of phase rigidity from non-Hermitian quantum mechanics to the bosonic setting. As a paradigmatic example, we fully characterize the stability phase diagram of a bosonic analogue to the Kitaev-Majorana chain under a wide class of boundary conditions. In particular, we establish a connection between phase-dependent transport properties and the onset of instability, and argue that stable regions in parameter space become of measure zero in the thermodynamic limit. Our analysis also reveals that boundary conditions that support Majorana zero modes in the fermionic Kitaev chain are precisely the same that support stability in the bosonic chain.