Entanglement, non-hermiticity and duality

Abstract

Usually duality process keeps energy spectrum invariant. In this paper, we provide a duality, which keeps entanglement spectrum invariant, in order to diagnose quantum entanglement of non-Hermitian non-interacting fermionic systems. We limit our attention to non-Hermitian systems with a complete set of biorthonormal eigenvectors and an entirely real energy spectrum. The original system has a reduced density matrix ρo and the real space is partitioned via a projecting operator Ro. After dualization, we obtain a new reduced density matrix ρd and a new real space projector Rd. Remarkably, entanglement spectrum and entanglement entropy keep invariant. Inspired by the duality, we defined two types of non-Hermitian models, upon Ro is given. In type-I exemplified by the “non-reciprocal model”, there exists at least one duality such that ρd is Hermitian. In other words, entanglement information of type-I non-Hermitian models with a given Ro is entirely controlled by Hermitian models with Rd. As a result, we are allowed to apply known results of Hermitian systems to efficiently obtain entanglement properties of type-I models. On the other hand, the duals of type-II models, exemplified by “non-Hermitian Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model”, are always non-Hermitian. For the practical purpose, the duality provides a potentially efficient computation route to entanglement of non-Hermitian systems. Via connecting different models, the duality also sheds lights on either trivial or nontrivial role of non-Hermiticity played in quantum entanglement, paving the way to potentially systematic classification and characterization of non-Hermitian systems from the entanglement perspective.