Emergence of PT-symmetry breaking in open quantum systems

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Huber, Julian and Kirton, Peter and Rotter, Stefan and Rabl, Peter (2020) Emergence of PT-symmetry breaking in open quantum systems. SciPost Physics, 9 (4). 052. ISSN 2542-4653 (https://doi.org/10.21468/SciPostPhys.9.4.052)

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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. However, it is still an unsolved problem how to generalize the concept of PT symmetry to the quantum domain, where the conventional definition in terms of non-Hermitian Hamiltonians is not applicable. Here we introduce a symmetry relation for Liouville operators that describe the dissipative evolution of arbitrary open quantum systems. Specifically, we show that the invariance of the Liouvillian under this 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.

ORCID iDs

Huber, Julian, Kirton, Peter ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3915-1098, Rotter, Stefan and Rabl, Peter;
  • Item type:Article
    ID code:74374
    Dates:
    Date
    Event
    19 October 2020
    Published
    8 October 2020
    Accepted
    29 May 2020
    Submitted
    Subjects:Science > Physics
    Department:Faculty of Science > Physics
    Depositing user: Pure Administrator
    Date deposited:27 Oct 2020 15:04
    Last modified:29 Nov 2024 01:16
    URI:https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/id/eprint/74374
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