Quantum phase transitions and information-theoretic measures of a spin-oscillator system with non-Hermitian coupling

Abstract: In this paper, we describe some interesting properties of a spin-oscillator system with non-Hermitian coupling. As shown earlier, the Hilbert space of this problem can be described by infinitely-many closed two-dimensional invariant subspaces together with the global ground state. We expose the appearance of exceptional points (EP) on such two-dimensional subspaces together with quantum phase transitions marking the transit from real to complex eigenvalues. We analytically compute some information-theoretic measures for this intriguing system, namely, the thermal entropy as well as the von Neumann and R\'enyi entropies using the framework of the so-called (G)-inner product. Such entropic measures are verified to be non-analytic at the points which mark the quantum phase transitions on the space of parameters -- a naive comparison with Ehrenfest's classification of phase transitions then suggests that these transitions are of the first order as the first derivatives of the entropies are discontinuous across such transitions.