Robust and fragile PT-symmetric phases in a tight-binding chain

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the phase diagram of a PT-symmetric tight-binding chain with impurities, revealing conditions for real eigenvalues and the nature of PT-symmetry breaking, with implications for continuum models.

Contribution

It provides an analytical and numerical study of the PT-symmetric phase diagram in a tight-binding chain with impurities, highlighting the fragility and special cases of PT-symmetry.

Findings

PT-symmetric region is fragile except in special impurity configurations

Critical impurity potential $oldsymbol{eta_{PT}}$ scales as $oldsymbol{1/N}$ and approaches zero for large N

Maximum number of complex eigenvalues is $oldsymbol{2m}$ when PT symmetry is broken

Abstract

We study the phase-diagram of a parity and time-reversal (PT) symmetric tight-binding chain with $N$ sites and hopping energy $J$, in the presence of two impurities with imaginary potentials $\pm i\gamma$ located at arbitrary (P-symmetric) positions $(m, \bar{m}=N+1-m)$ on the chain where $m\leq N/2$. We find that except in the two special cases where impurities are either the farthest or the closest, the PT-symmetric region - defined as the region in which all energy eigenvalues are real - is algebraically fragile. We analytically and numerically obtain the critical impurity potential $\gamma_{PT}$ and show that $\gamma_{PT}\propto 1/N\rightarrow 0$ as $N\rightarrow\infty$ except in the two special cases. When the PT symmetry is spontaneously broken, we find that the maximum number of complex eigenvalues is given by $2m$. When the two impurities are the closest, we show that the critical impurity strength $\gamma_{PT}$ in the limit $N\rightarrow\infty$ approaches $J$ ($J/2$) provided that $N$ is even (odd). For an even $N$ the PT symmetry is maximally broken whereas for an odd $N$, it is sequentially broken. Our results show that the phase-diagram of a PT-symmetric tight-binding chain is extremely rich and that, in the continuum limit, this model may give rise to new PT-symmetric Hamiltonians.