Entanglement and Correlation Spreading in non-Hermitian Spin Chains

Abstract: Non-Hermitian quantum many-body systems are attracting widespread interest for their exotic properties, including unconventional quantum criticality and topology. Here we study how quantum information and correlations spread under a quantum quench generated by a prototypical non-Hermitian spin chain. Using the mapping to fermions we solve exactly the problem and compute the entanglement entropy and the correlation dynamics in the thermodynamic limit. Depending on the quench parameters, we identify two dynamical phases. One is characterized by rapidly saturating entanglement and correlations. The other instead presents a logarithmic growth in time, and correlations spreading faster than the Lieb-Robinson bound, with collapses and revivals giving rise to a modulated light-cone structure. Here, in the long-time limit, we compute analytically the entanglement entropy that we show to scale logarithmically with the size of the cut, with an effective central charge that we obtain in closed form. Our results provide an example of an exactly solvable non-Hermitian many-body problem that shows rich physics including entanglement and spectral transitions.