Violation and Revival of Kramers' Degeneracy in Open Quantum Systems

TL;DR

This paper explores how Kramers' degeneracy behaves in open quantum systems, showing it can be temporarily violated and then restored, depending on thermalization and symmetry conditions, with implications for quantum degeneracy phenomena.

Contribution

It provides a theoretical framework linking Kramers' degeneracy to spectral properties in open systems and demonstrates its violation and revival through a concrete fermionic model.

Findings

Kramers' degeneracy is linked to spectral degeneracy and vanishing inter-spin spectra.

Violations occur after sudden environmental coupling but are reversible after thermalization.

Degeneracy protected by unitary symmetry remains unaffected.

Abstract

Kramers' theorem ensures double degeneracy in the energy spectrum of a time-reversal symmetric fermionic system with half-integer total spin. Here we are now trying to go beyond the closed system and discuss Kramers' degeneracy in open systems out of equilibrium. In this letter, we prove that the Kramers' degeneracy in interacting fermionic systems is equivalent to the degeneracy in the spectra of different spins together with the vanishing of the inter-spin spectrum. We find the violation of Kramers' degeneracy in time-reversal symmetric open quantum systems is locked with whether the system reaches thermal equilibrium. After a sudden coupling to an environment in a time-reversal symmetry preserving way, the Kramers doublet experiences an energy splitting at a short time and then a recovery process. We verified the violation and revival of Kramers' degeneracy in a concrete model of interacting fermions and we find Kramers' degeneracy is restored after the local thermalization time. By contrast, for time-reversal symmetry $\tilde{\cal T}$ with $\tilde{\cal T}^2=1$, we find although there is a violation and revival of spectral degeneracy for different spins, the inter-spin spectral function is always nonzero. We also prove that the degeneracy in spectral function protected by unitary symmetry can be maintained always.