Smearing of dynamical quantum phase transitions in dissipative free-fermion systems

We investigate the Lindblad dynamics of the reduced Loschmidt echo (RLE) in dissipative quadratic fermion systems. Focusing on the case of gain and loss dissipation, we derive general conditions for the persistence of nonanalyticities (so-called dynamical quantum phase transitions) in the time evolution of the RLE. We show that nonanalyticities that are present in the corresponding unitary dynamics can survive under purely gain or purely loss processes, but are completely smeared out as soon as both channels are active, even if one is infinitesimally small. These results hold for generic dissipative Gaussian evolutions, and are illustrated explicitly for the quench from the Néel state in the tight-binding chain, as well as for the quantum Ising chain. We also show that the subtle interplay between dissipative and unitary dynamics gives rise to a nested lightcone structure in the dynamics of the RLE, even in cases where this structure is not present in the corresponding unitary evolution, due to coherent cancellations in the phase structure of the wavefunction.