Diagnosing thermalization dynamics of non-Hermitian quantum systems via GKSL master equations

Abstract: The application of the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis to non-Hermitian quantum systems has become one of the most important topics in dissipative quantum chaos, recently giving rise to intense debates. The process of thermalization is intricate, involving many time-evolution trajectories in the reduced Hilbert space of the system. By considering two different expansion forms of the density matrices adopted in the biorthogonal and right-state time evolutions, we have derived two versions of the Gorini-Kossakowski-Sudarshan-Lindblad master equations describing the non-Hermitian systems coupled to a bosonic heat bath in thermal equilibrium. By solving the equations, we have identified a sufficient condition for thermalization under both time evolutions, resulting in Boltzmann biorthogonal and right-eigenstate statistics, respectively. This finding implies that the recently proposed biorthogonal random matrix theory needs an appropriate revision. Moreover, we have exemplified the precise dynamics of thermalization and thermodynamic properties with test models.