Liouvillian exceptional points in continuous variable system

Abstract

The Liouvillian exceptional points for a quantum Markovian master equation of an oscillator in a generic environment are obtained. They occur at the points when the modified frequency of the oscillator vanishes, whereby the eigenvalues of the Liouvillian become real. In a generic system there are two parameters that modify the oscillator's natural frequency. One of the parameters can be the damping rate. The exceptional point then corresponds to critical damping of the oscillator. This situation is illustrated by the Caldeira--Leggett (CL) equation and the Markovian limit of the Hu--Paz--Zhang (HPZ) equation. The other parameter changes the oscillator's effective mass whereby the exceptional point is reached in the limit of extremely heavy oscillator. This situation is illustrated by a modified form of the Kossakowski--Lindblad (KL) equation. The eigenfunctions coalesce at the exceptional points and break into subspaces labelled by a natural number $N$. In each of the $N$-subspace, there is a $(N+1)$-fold degeneracy and the Liouvillian has a Jordan block structure of order-$(N+1)$. We obtain the explicit form of the generalized eigenvectors for a few Liouvillians. Because of the degeneracies, there is a freedom of choice in the generalized eigenfunctions. This freedom manifests itself as an invariance in the Jordan block structure under a similarity transformation whose form is obtained. We compare the relaxation of the first excited state of an oscillator in the underdamped region, critically damped region which corresponds to the exceptional point, and overdamped region using the generalized eigenvectors of the CL equation.

To appear in Physica A (2023)

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