Symmetry-resolved entanglement in critical non-Hermitian systems

The study of entanglement in the symmetry sectors of a theory has recently attracted a lot of attention since it provides better understanding of some aspects of quantum many-body systems. In this paper, we extend this analysis to the case of non-Hermitian models, in which the reduced density matrix rho A may be nonpositive definite and the entanglement entropy negative or even complex. Here we examine in detail the symmetry-resolved entanglement in the ground state of the non-Hermitian Su-Schrieffer-Heeger chain at the critical point, a model that preserves particle number and whose scaling limit is a bc-ghost nonunitary conformal field theory (CFT). By combining bosonization techniques in the field theory and exact lattice numerical calculations, we analytically derive the charged moments of rho A and |rho A |. From them, we can understand the origin of the nonpositiveness of rho A and naturally define a positive-definite reduced density matrix in each charge sector, which gives a well-defined symmetry-resolved entanglement entropy. As a by-product, we also obtain the analytical distribution of the critical entanglement spectrum.