Fixed lines in a non-Hermitian Kitaev chain with spatially balanced pairing processes (2305.00496v3)

Abstract: Exact solutions for non-Hermitian quantum many-body systems are rare but may provide valuable insights into the interplay between Hermitian and non-Hermitian components. We report our investigation of a non-Hermitian variant of a p-wave Kitaev chain by introducing staggered imbalanced pair creation and annihilation terms. We find that there exists a fixed line in the phase diagram, at which the ground state remains unchanged in the presence of non-Hermitian term under the periodic boundary condition for a finite system. This allows the constancy of the topological index in the process of varying the balance strength at arbitrary rate, exhibiting the robustness of the topology for non-Hermitian Kitaev chain under time-dependent perturbations. The underlying mechanism is investigated through the equivalent quantum spin system obtained by the Jordan-Wigner transformation for infinite chain. In addition, the exact solution shows that a resonant non-Hermitian impurity can induce a pair of zero modes in the corresponding Majorana lattice, which asymptotically approach the edge modes in the thermodynamic limit, manifesting the bulk-boundary correspondence. Numerical simulation is performed for the quench dynamics for the systems with slight deviation from the fixed line to show the stability region in time. This work reveals the interplay between the pair creation and annihilation pairing processes.