Probing phase transitions in non-Hermitian systems with quantum entanglement

Abstract: We study the quantum entanglement and quantum phase transition of the non-Hermitian anisotropic spin-1/2 XY model and XXZ model with the staggered imaginary field by analytical methods and numerical exact diagonalization, respectively. Various entanglement measures, including concurrence, negativity, mutual information, and quantum coherence, and both biorthogonal and self-normal quantities are investigated. Both the biorthogonal and self-normal entanglement quantities, except the biorthogonal concurrence, are found to be capable of detecting the first-order and $\mathcal{PT}$ transitions in the XXZ model, as well as the Ising and $\mathcal{RT}$ transitions in the XY model. In addition, we introduce the unconstrained concurrence and demonstrate its effectiveness in detecting these transitions. On the other hand, the Beresinskii-Kosterlitz-Thoules (BKT) transition in the XXZ model is revealed through concurrence and negativity at small non-Hermiticity strengths. Notably, the critical points observed in the Hermitian limit evolve into exceptional points as the strength of the non-Hermiticity increases. Furthermore, we find that the first-order transition survives up to a higher non-Hermiticity strength compared to the BKT transition within the $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric regime of the XXZ model.