English

Broken Hermiticity phase transition in Bose-Hubbard model

Quantum Physics 2018-11-07 v1 Other Condensed Matter Mathematical Physics math.MP

Abstract

A new version of the change of the "phase" (i.e., of the set of observable characteristics) of a quantum system is proposed. In a general scenario the evolution is assumed generated, before the phase transition, by some standard Hermitian Hamiltonian H(before)H^{(before)}, and, after the phase transition, by one of the recently very popular non-standard, non-Hermitian (but hiddenly Hermitian, i.e., still unitarity-guaranteeing) Hamiltonians H(after)H^{(after)}. For consistency, a smoothness of matching between the two operators as well as between the related physical Hilbert spaces must be guaranteed. The feasibility of the idea is illustrated via the two-mode (N1)(N-1)-bosonic Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian. In H(before)=H(BH)(ε)H^{(before)}=H^{(BH)}(\varepsilon) we use the decreasing real ε(before)0\varepsilon^{(before)} \to 0. In the hiddenly Hermitian continuation H(after)=H(BH)(ε~)H^{(after)}=H^{(BH)}(\tilde{\varepsilon}) the imaginary part of the purely imaginary ε~(after)\tilde{\varepsilon}^{(after)} grows. The smoothness of the transition occurring at the interface ε=ε~=0\varepsilon=\tilde{\varepsilon}=0 is then guaranteed by an {\it ad hoc\,} amendment of the inner product in Hilbert space "after". The trivial Hilbert-space metric Θ(before)=I\Theta^{(before)}=I must match Θ(after)I\Theta^{(after)} \neq I smoothly. This is confirmed and illustrated by the explicit constructions of a few Θ(after)\Theta^{(after)}s in closed form.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1810.05771,
  title  = {Broken Hermiticity phase transition in Bose-Hubbard model},
  author = {Miloslav Znojil},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1810.05771},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

27 pp, 2 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-23T04:38:19.936Z