Laboratoire de Physique Théorique
Toulouse - UMR 5152

We theoretically investigate the non-Hermitian dynamical topology of a driven-dissipative Kitaev chain. For this, we have employed the third quantization formalism [1] to explore signatures of the non-trivial topology in the time-evolution of the entanglement spectra.

We shall first present a concise summary of the underlying physics of the Kitaev chain and clarify the merits of stepping outside the realm of Hermitian physics. We then focus on the driven-dissipative Kitaev chain and explore its richer phase diagram with gapless, real-line gapped, imaginary-line gapped, and topological phases. We further discuss this system’s dynamics from the initial dissipation-less trivial phase to other regions of the phase diagram. We reveal that non-trivial topology is reflected in crossings in the entanglement spectrum for quenches from a trivial to the topological phase. We shall also describe the non-Hermitian classification of our systems using a generalized winding number. Finally, we shall emphasize that our results are unique to interacting quantum systems.

[1] T. Prosen, New J. Phys. 10, 043026 (2008).