Breakdown of linear spin-wave theory in a non-Hermitian quantum spin chain

We present the spin-wave theory of the excitation spectrum and quench dynamics of the non-Hermitian transverse-field Ising model. The complex excitation spectrum is obtained for a generic hypercubic lattice using the linear approximation of the Holstein-Primakoff transformation together with the complex bosonic Bogolyubov transformation. In the one-dimensional case, our result compares very well with the exact quasiparticle dispersion relation obtained via a fermionic representation of the problem, at least in the regime of large dissipation and transverse field. When applied to the quench dynamics, however, we show that the linear spin-wave approximation breaks down and the bosonic theory is plagued by a divergence at finite times. We understand the origin of this instability using a single-mode approximation. While limited to short times, we show that this approach allows us to characterize the dynamics arising from the quench of the dissipative term and the light-cone structure of the propagation quantum correlations. Furthermore, for the one-dimensional case, the linear spin-wave dynamics shows good agreement with the exact fermionic solution, both for the local magnetization and the spin-spin correlations.