Exceptional points and the topology of quantum many-body spectra

Abstract

We show that in a generic, ergodic quantum many-body system the interactions induce a non-trivial topology for an arbitrarily small non-hermitean component of the Hamiltonian. This is due to an exponential-in-system-size proliferation of exceptional points which have the hermitian limit as an accumulation (hyper-)surface. The nearest-neighbour level repulsion characterizing hermitian ergodic many-body sytems is thus shown to be a projection of a richer phenomenology where actually all the exponentially many pairs of eigenvalues interact. The proliferation and accumulation of exceptional points also implies an exponential difficulty in isolating a local ergodic quantum many-body system from a bath, as a robust topological signature remains in the form of exceptional points arbitrarily close to the hermitian limit.