Topological Charge of Causality at a PT-Symmetric Exceptional Point

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Author: Liu, Kejun
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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_version_ 1866918477004013568
author Liu, Kejun
author_facet Liu, Kejun
contents Causality in linear response is conventionally treated as a binary property: a response function is either analytic in the upper half-plane or it is not. We show that in a PT-symmetric open dimer it instead carries a topological charge. As the gain-loss parameter crosses the exceptional point, a single pole of the reflection coefficient migrates into the upper half-plane, the Blaschke winding number jumps from 0 to 1, and standard Kramers-Kronig (KK) reconstruction acquires a Lorentzian residual fixed by the pole residue. The transition is sharp, protected by the codimension-one structure of the exceptional point, and directly measurable in a one-port reflection experiment. Most strikingly, the violation magnitude scales as Delta_KK ~ |gamma - gamma_c|^nu with nu ~ -1.08 in the single-port geometry: the breakdown of standard KK is strongest at threshold and weakens deeper in the broken phase. We derive the exact reflection coefficient, verify the residue-corrected dispersion relation, and propose a THz time-domain spectroscopy protocol that detects the topological charge through the residual itself.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_00117
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Topological Charge of Causality at a PT-Symmetric Exceptional Point
Liu, Kejun
Quantum Physics
Mathematical Physics
81S22, 81Q12, 47A56
Causality in linear response is conventionally treated as a binary property: a response function is either analytic in the upper half-plane or it is not. We show that in a PT-symmetric open dimer it instead carries a topological charge. As the gain-loss parameter crosses the exceptional point, a single pole of the reflection coefficient migrates into the upper half-plane, the Blaschke winding number jumps from 0 to 1, and standard Kramers-Kronig (KK) reconstruction acquires a Lorentzian residual fixed by the pole residue. The transition is sharp, protected by the codimension-one structure of the exceptional point, and directly measurable in a one-port reflection experiment. Most strikingly, the violation magnitude scales as Delta_KK ~ |gamma - gamma_c|^nu with nu ~ -1.08 in the single-port geometry: the breakdown of standard KK is strongest at threshold and weakens deeper in the broken phase. We derive the exact reflection coefficient, verify the residue-corrected dispersion relation, and propose a THz time-domain spectroscopy protocol that detects the topological charge through the residual itself.
title Topological Charge of Causality at a PT-Symmetric Exceptional Point
topic Quantum Physics
Mathematical Physics
81S22, 81Q12, 47A56
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.00117