Unconventional quantum criticality in a non-Hermitian extended Kitaev chain

Abstract We investigate the nature of quantum criticality and topological phase transitions near the critical lines obtained for the extended Kitaev chain with next nearest neighbor couplings and non-Hermitian chemical potential. We surprisingly find multiple gap-less points, the locations of which in the momentum space can change along the critical line unlike the Hermitian counterpart. The interesting simultaneous occurrences of vanishing and sign flipping behavior by real and imaginary components, respectively of the lowest excitation is observed near the topological phase transition. Introduction of non-Hermitian factor leads to vanishing of a critical line and hence, reduced number of multi-critical points as compared to the Hermitian case. The critical exponents obtained for the multi-critical and bi-critical points show a very distinct behavior from the Hermitian case. Interestingly, we further observe violation of Lorentz invariance throughout the criticality in our non-Hermitian model.