Non-Hermitian quantum phase transitions in the XY model induced by staggered imaginary Dzyaloshinskii--Moriya interaction
We investigate non-Hermitian quantum phase transitions driven by staggered imaginary Dzyaloshinskii--Moriya (DM) interactions in a transverse-field $XY$ chain. By virtue of a staggered nonunitary transformation, we exactly diagonalize the Hamiltonian. For $D<1$, this procedure maps the non-Hermitian model onto a standa...