The Nielsen-Ninomiya theorem, PT-invariant non-Hermiticity and single 8-shaped Dirac cone

Abstract

The Nielsen-Ninomiya theorem implies that any local, Hermitian and translationally invariant lattice action in even-dimensional spacetime possess an equal number of left- and right-handed chiral fermions. We argue that if one sacrifices the property of Hermiticity while keeping the locality and translation invariance, while imposing invariance of the action under the space-time (PT) reversal symmetry, then the excitation spectrum of the theory may contain a non-equal number of left- and right-handed massless fermions with real-valued dispersion. We illustrate our statement in a simple 1+1 dimensional lattice model which exhibits a skewed 8-figure patterns in its energy spectrum. A drawback of the model is that the PT symmetry of the Hamiltonian is spontaneously broken implying that the energy spectrum contains complex branches. We also demonstrate that the Dirac cone is robust against local disorder so that the massless excitations in this PT-invariant model are not gapped by random space-dependent perturbations in the couplings.

9 pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (4)

• Making Sense of Non-Hermitian Hamiltonians
• Parity-time-symmetric quantum critical phenomena
• $PT$ Symmetric Real Dirac Fermions and Semimetals
• TASI 2003 Lectures on Anomalies

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