We investigate the impact on basic quantum transport properties of disorder-induced exceptional points (EPs) that emerge in a disorder-averaged Green's function description of two-dimensional (2D) Dirac semimetals with spin- or orbital-dependent potential scattering. Remarkably, we find that EPs may promote the nearly vanishing conductance of a finite sample at the Dirac point to a sizable value that increases with disorder strength. This striking behavior exhibits a strong directional anisotropy that is closely related to the Fermi arcs connecting the EPs. We corroborate our results by numerically exact simulations, thus revealing the fingerprints of characteristic non-Hermitian spectral features also on the localization properties of the considered systems. Finally, several candidates for the experimental verification of our theoretical analysis are discussed, including disordered electronic square-net materials and cold atoms in spin-dependent optical lattices.
A novel quantum interference effect in disordered quasi-one-dimensional rings in the inhomogeneous magnetic field is reported. We calculate the canonical disorder averaged persistent current using the diagrammatic perturbation theory. It is shown that within the adiabatic regime the average current oscillates as a function of the geometric flux which is related to the Berry phase and the period becomes half the value of the case of a single one-dimensional ring. We also discuss the magnetic dephasing effect on the averaged current.
We study the dependence of the vacuum Rabi splitting (VRS) on frequency disorder, vibrations, near-field effects and density in molecular polaritonics. In the mesoscopic limit, static frequency disorder alone can already introduce a loss mechanism from polaritonic states into a dark state reservoir, which we quantitatively describe, providing an analytical scaling of the VRS with the level of disorder. Disorder additionally can split a molecular ensemble into donor-type and acceptor-type molecules and the combination of vibronic coupling, dipole-dipole interactions and vibrational relaxation i…
We study Coulomb drag between two parallel disordered mesoscopic 1D-wires. By numerical ensemble averaging we calculate the statistical properties of the transconductance G_21 including its distribution. For wires with mutually uncorrelated disorder potentials we find that the mean value is finite, but with comparable fluctuations so that sign-reversal is possible. For identical disorder potentials the mean value and the fluctuations nare enhanced compared to the case of uncorrelated disorder.
The pursuit of the non-Hermitian skin effect (NHSE) in various physical systems is of great research interest. Compared with recent progress in non-electronic systems, the implementation of the NHSE in condensed matter physics remains elusive. Here, we show that the NHSE can be engineered in the mesoscopic heterojunctions (system plus reservoir) in which electrons in two channels of the system moving towards each other have asymmetric coupling to those of the reservoir. This makes electrons in the system moving forward and in the opposite direction have unequal lifetimes, and so gives rise to …
We present a machine learning approach that allows to characterize the disorder potential of a two-dimensional electronic system from its quantum transport properties. Numerically simulated transport data for a large number of disorder configurations is used for the training of artificial neural networks. We show that the trained networks are able to recognize details of the disorder potential of an unknown sample from its transport properties, and that they can even reconstruct the complete potential landscape seen by the electrons.
The study explores perpendicular transport through macroscopically inhomogeneous three-dimensional disordered conductors using mesoscopic methods (real-space Green function technique in a two-probe measuring geometry). The nanoscale samples (containing $\sim1000$ atoms) are modeled by a tight-binding Hamiltonian on a simple cubic lattice where disorder is introduced in the on-site potential energy. I compute the transport properties of: disordered metallic junctions formed by concatenating two homogenous samples with different kinds of microscopic disorder, a single strongly disordered interfa…
We discuss intrinsic inhomogeneities of superconductive properties of uniformly disordered thin films with large dimensionless conductance g. It is shown that mesoscopic fluctuations, which usually contain a small factor 1/g, are crucially enhanced near the critical conductance g_c >> 1 where superconductivity is destroyed at T=0 due to Coulomb suppression of the Cooper attraction. This leads to strong spatial fluctuations of the local transition temperature and thus to percolative nature of the thermal superconductive transition.
The effect of impurity and domain-wall scattering on the electrical conductivity of disordered mesoscopic magnetic thin films is studied by use of computer simulation. The results indicate a reduction of resistivity due to a domain wall, which is consistent with the explanation in terms of the dephasing caused by domain wall.
The statistics of eigenfunction amplitudes are studied in mesoscopic disordered electron systems of finite size. The exact eigenspectrum and eigenstates are obtained by solving numerically Anderson Hamiltonian on a three-dimensional lattice for different strengths of disorder introduced either in the potential on-site energy (``diagonal'') or in the hopping integral (``off-diagonal''). The samples are characterized by the exact zero-temperature conductance computed using real-space Green function technique and related Landauer-type formula. The comparison of eigenstate statistics in two models…
Since the discovery of the Berry phase, there has been much interest in the study of topological effects in the fields of quantum mechanics and condensed matter physics. In this paper we investigate the persistent charge current in mesoscopic disorderd rings and compute the disorder averaged persistent current using the diagrammatic method. We find that within the adiabatic regime the average current oscillates as a function of the geometric flux which is related to the Berry phase.
Recent studies of disorder or non-Hermiticity induced topological insulators inject new ingredients for engineering topological matter. Here we consider the effect of purely non-Hermitian disorders, a combination of these two ingredients, in a 1D coupled-cavity array with disordered gain and loss. Topological photonic states can be induced by increasing gain-loss disorder strength with topological invariants carried by localized states in the complex bulk spectra. The system showcases rich phase diagrams and distinct topological states from Hermitian disorders. The non-Hermitian critical behav…
We numerically investigate the statistical properties of electrochemical capacitance in disordered two-dimensional mesoscopic capacitors. Based on the tight-binding Hamiltonian, the Green's function formalism is adopted to study the average electrochemical capacitance, its fluctuation as well as the distribution of capacitance of the disordered mesoscopic capacitors for three different ensembles: orthogonal (symmetry index β=1), unitary (β=2), and symplectic (β=4). It is found that the electrochemical capacitance in the disordered systems exhibits universal behavior. In the case of single cond…
In a recent paper, Phys. Rev. Lett. 81, 1074 (1998), Golubev and Zaikin (GZ) found that ``zero-point fluctuations of electrons'' contribute to the dephasing rate extracted from the magnetoresistance. As a result, the dephasing rate remains finite at zero temperature. GZ claimed that their results ``agree well with the experimental data''. We point out that the GZ results are incompatible with (i) conventional perturbation theory of the effects of interaction on weak localization (WL), and (ii) with the available experimental data. More detailed criticism of GZ findings can be found in cond-mat…
In both research and textbook literature one often finds two ``different'' Kubo formulas for the zero-temperature conductance of a non-interacting Fermi system. They contain a trace of the product of velocity operators and single-particle (retarded and advanced) Green operators: $\text{Tr} (\hat{v}_x \hat{G}^r \hat{v}_x \hat{G}^a)$ or $\text{Tr} (\hat{v}_x \text{Im} \hat{G} \hat{v}_x \text{Im} \hat{G})$. The study investigates the relationship between these expressions, as well as the requirements of current conservation, through exact evaluation of such quantum-mechanical traces for a nanosca…
We show that pure spin Hall current, flowing out of a four-terminal phase-coherent two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) within inversion asymmetric semiconductor heterostructure, contains contributions from both the extrinsic mechanisms (spin-orbit dependent scattering off impurities) and the intrinsic ones (due to the Rashba coupling). While the extrinsic contribution vanishes in the weakly and strongly disordered limits, and the intrinsic one dominates in the quasiballistic limit, in the crossover transport regime the spin Hall conductance, exhibiting sample-to-sample large fluctuations and s…
Non-Hermitian systems can exhibit unique topological and localization properties. Here we elucidate the non-Hermitian effects on disordered topological systems by studying a non-Hermitian disordered Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model with nonreciprocal hoppings. We show that the non-Hermiticity can enhance the topological phase against disorders by increasing energy gaps. Moreover, we uncover a topological phase which emerges only under both moderate non-Hermiticity and disorders, and is characterized by localized insulating bulk states with a disorder-averaged winding number and zero-energy edge mode…
We study anomalous mesoscopic transport effects at the onset of the superconducting transition focusing on the observed large Nernst-Ettinghausen signal in disordered thin films. In the vicinity of the transition, as the Ginzburg-Landau coherence length of preformed Cooper pairs diverges, short-range mesoscopic fluctuations are equivalent to local fluctuations of the critical temperature. As a result, the dynamical susceptibility function of pair propagation acquires a singular mesoscopic component, and consequently, superconducting correlations give rise to enhanced mesoscopic fluctuations of…
Cooperative Boundary Switching of Mesoscopic Real Spectra in a Non-Hermitian Chain Family
Beijing Institute of Petrochemical Technology（北京石油化工学院）；Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院物理研究所凝聚态物理国家实验室）；Faculty of Science, Kunming University of Science and Technology（昆明理工大学理学院）；Jining University（济宁学院）
We have generalized the scattering-matrix theory of multiple Andreev reflections in mesoscopic Josephson junctions to the multi-mode case, and applied it to short superconductor/normal metal/superconductor junctions with diffusive electron transport. Both the dc and ac current-voltage characteristics are analyzed for a wide range of bias voltages $V$. For voltages smaller than the supeconducting gap the dc differential conductance of the junction diverges as $1/\sqrt{V}$.
We demonstrate the occurrence of nodal non-Hermitian (NH) phases featuring exceptional degeneracies in chiral-symmetric disordered quantum wires, where NH physics naturally arises from the self-energy in a disorder-averaged Green's function description. Notably, we find that at least two nodal points in the clean Hermitian system are required for exceptional points to be effectively stabilized upon adding disorder. We identify and study experimental signatures of our theoretical findings both in the spectral functions and in mesoscopic quantum transport properties of the considered systems. Ou…
Mesoscopic low frequency noise in electrical characteristics of disordered conductors is a result of dynamic quantum interference pattern due to motion of defects. This has been firmly established by demonstrating the characteristic partial suppression of the noise amplitude by the dephasing effect of a weak external magnetic field. The spatial correlation of the quantum interference pattern in disordered normal state conductors is invariably limited by the exponential phase relaxation due to inelastic processes. In this paper we develop a quantitative theory of the mesoscopic noise in the s-w…
Enhancement of the dielectric response of insulators by disorder is theoretically proposed, where the quantum interference of electronic waves through the nanoscale/mesoscopic system and its change due to external perturbations control the polarization. In the disordered case with all the states being localized, the resonant tunneling, which is topologically protected, plays a crucial role, and enhances the dielectric response by a factor 30~40 compared with the pure case. Realization of this idea with accessible materials/structures is also discussed.
There is a common belief in the condensed matter community that bulk quantities become insensitive to the boundary condition in the infinite-volume limit. Here we reconsider this statement in terms of recent arguments of non-Hermitian skin effects, -strong dependence of spectra on boundary conditions for the non-Hermitian Hamiltonians-, in the traditional Green's function formalism. We find the criterion for quantities to be sensitive/insensitive against the boundary condition in Hermitian correlated/disordered systems, which is characterized by the residue theorem. We also discuss the uncerta…
We present an extensive analytical study of persistent current in a weakly disordered two-chain cylindrical ring threaded by an Aharonov-Bohm flux $0 < ϕ<ϕ_0/2$ (with $ϕ_0$ the flux quantum) and described by the Anderson model. The effect of the disorder reveals a strong reduction of the persistent current for flux values near $ϕ_0/4$. In conjunction with the pure system (zeroth order) current profile averaged over numbers of electrons and earlier results for the effect of disorder in one-dimensional rings, our two-channel results provide a simple interpretation of salient features of numerica…
We show that Dirac fermion systems in two dimensions generally exhibit disorder-induced nodal arc replacing the nodal point and tilted Dirac cone, provided that the two components of the Dirac fermion correspond to two distinct orbitals unrelated by symmetry. This result is explicitly demonstrated using renormalization group analysis in a disordered Dirac model that we introduce, where the disorder potential acts differently on the two orbitals. As we show by numerical simulations and self-consistent Born approximation calculation, this drives the system into a new strongly disordered phase.
We study the density of states (DOS) and the transition temperature $T_c$ in a dirty superconducting film with rare classical magnetic impurities of an arbitrary strength described by the Poissonian statistics. We take into account that the potential disorder is a source for mesoscopic fluctuations of the local DOS, and, consequently, for the effective strength of magnetic impurities. We find that these mesoscopic fluctuations result in a non-zero DOS for all energies in the region of the phase diagram where without this effect the DOS is zero within the standard mean-field theory. This mechan…
We employ the fermionic and bosonic replicated nonlinear sigma models to treat Ginibre unitary, symplectic, and orthogonal ensembles of non-Hermitian random matrix Hamiltonians. Using saddle point approach combined with Borel resummation procedure we derive the exact large-N results for microscopic density of states in all three ensembles. We also obtain tails of the density of states as well the two-point function for the unitary ensemble.
The interplay among topology, disorder, and non-Hermiticity can induce some exotic topological and localization phenomena. Here we investigate this interplay in a two-dimensional non-Hermitian disordered Chern-insulator model with two typical kinds of non-Hermiticities, the nonreciprocal hopping and on-site gain-and-loss effects. The topological phase diagrams are obtained by numerically calculating two topological invariants in the real space, which are the disorder-averaged open-bulk Chern number and the generalized Bott index, respectively. We reveal that the nonreciprocal hopping (the gain…
We study the characterization and realization of higher-order topological Anderson insulator (HOTAI) in non-Hermitian systems, where the non-Hermitian mechanism ensures extra symmetries as well as gain and loss disorder.We illuminate that the quadrupole moment $Q_{xy}$ can be used as the real space topological invariant of non-Hermitian higher-order topological insulator (HOTI). Based on the biorthogonal bases and non-Hermitian symmetries, we prove that $Q_{xy}$ can be quantized to $0$ or $0.5$. Considering the disorder effect, we find the disorder-induced phase transition from normal insulato…
Disorder-induced spectral correlations of mesoscopic quantum systems in the non-diffusive regime and their effect on the magnetic susceptibility are studied. We perform impurity averaging for non-translational invariant systems by combining a diagrammatic perturbative approach with semiclassical techniques. This allows us to study the entire range from clean to diffusive systems. As an application we consider the magnetic response of non-interacting electrons in microstructures in the presence of weak disorder. We show that in the ballistic case (elastic mean free path $\ell$ larger than the s…
Disorder and non-Hermiticity dramatically impact the topological and localization properties of a quantum system, giving rise to intriguing quantum states of matter. The rich interplay of disorder, non-Hermiticity, and topology is epitomized by the recently proposed non-Hermitian topological Anderson insulator that hosts a plethora of exotic phenomena. Here we experimentally simulate the non-Hermitian topological Anderson insulator using disordered photonic quantum walks, and characterize its localization and topological properties. In particular, we focus on the competition between Anderson l…
We show a dramatic deviation from ergodicity for the conductance fluctuations in graphene. In marked contrast to the ergodicity of dirty metals, fluctuations generated by varying magnetic field are shown to be much smaller than those obtained when sweeping Fermi energy. They also exhibit a strongly anisotropic response to the symmetry-breaking effects of a magnetic field, when applied perpendicular or parallel to the graphene plane. These results reveal a complex picture of quantum interference in graphene, whose description appears more challenging than for conventional mesoscopic systems.
In this paper, we study the properties of two-dimensional lattices in the presence of non-Hermitian disorder. In the context of coupled mode theory, we consider random gain-loss distributions on every waveguide channel (on site disorder). Our work provides a systematic study of the interplay between disorder and non-Hermiticity. In particular, we study the eigenspectrum in the complex frequency plane and we examine the localization properties of the eigenstates, either by the participation ratio or the level spacing, defined in the complex plane. A modified level distribution function vs disor…
We present phase coherence time measurements in quasi-one-dimensional mesoscopic wires made from high mobility two-dimensional electron gas. By implanting gallium ions into a GaAs/AlGaAs heterojunction we are able to vary the diffusion coefficient over 2 orders of magnitude. We show that in the diffusive limit, the decoherence time follows a power law as a function of diffusion coefficient as expected by theory. When the disorder is low enough so that the samples are semi-ballistic, we observe a new and unexpected regime in which the phase coherence time is independent of disorder. In addition…
We measured the conductance fluctuation of bi- and trilayer graphene devices prepared on mechanical exfoliated graphene by an all-dry, lithography-free process using an ultrathin quartz filament as a shadow mask. Reproducible fluctuations in conductance as a function of applied gate voltage or magnetic field were found. As the gate voltage was tuned so that the graphene device was pushed to the charge neutral point, the amplitude of the conductance fluctuation was found to be suppressed quickly from a value consistent with universal conductance fluctuation when the devices were still well with…
We reconsider the study of persistent currents in a disordered one-dimensional ring threaded by a magnetic flux, using he one-band tight-binding model for a ring of N-sites with random site energies. The secular equation for the eigenenergies expressed in terms of transfer matrices in the site representation is solved exactly to second order in a perturbation theory for weak disorder and fluxes differing from half-integer multiples of the elementary flux quantum. From the equilibrium currents associated with the one-electron eigenstates we derive closed analytic expressions for the disorder av…
We generalize Yang's theory from the U(1) gauge field to the non-Abelian $U(1)\times SU(2)_{spin}$ gauge field. Based on this generalization and taking into account the geometric Pancharatnam phase as well as an effective Aharonov-Bohm (AB) phase in nonadiabatic noncyclic transport, we calculate the ensemble average Fourier spectrum of the conductance in disordered mesoscopic rings connected to two leads. Our theory can explain the experimental results reported by Morpurgo {\sl et al.} [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 80}, 1050 (1998)] satisfactorily. In particular, we clarify that the experimentally ob…
The transport properties of a rectangular mesoscopic plaquette in the presence of a perpendicular magnetic field are studied in a tight-binding model with randomly distributed traps. The longitudinal and Hall resistances are calculted in the four-probe Landauer-Büttiker formalism which accounts automatically both for the quantum coherence and the trapping-induced localization. The localized character of eigenvectors and the specific aspect of the density of states at a given magnetic flux are correlated with the behaviour of the mentioned resistances as function of the Fermi energy. The Hall i…
We report on the comprehensive numerical study of the fluctuation and correlation properties of wave functions in three-dimensional mesoscopic diffusive conductors. Several large sets of nanoscale samples with finite metallic conductance, modeled by an Anderson model with different strengths of diagonal box disorder, have been generated in order to investigate both small and large deviations (as well as the connection between them) of the distribution function of eigenstate amplitudes from the universal prediction of random matrix theory. We find that small, weak localization-type, deviations …
Non-Hermitian skin effect exhibits the collapse of the extended bulk modes into the extensive number of localized boundary states in open boundary conditions. Here we demonstrate the disorder-driven phase transition of the trivial non-Hermitian system to the higher-order non-Hermitian skin effect phase. In contrast to the clean systems, the disorder-induced boundary modes form an arc in the complex energy plane, which is the manifestation of the disorder-driven dynamical phase transition. At the phase transition, the localized corner modes and bulk modes characterized by trivial Hamiltonian co…
We describe the effects of phase coherence on transport and thermodynamic properties of a disordered conducting network. In analogy with weak-localization correction, we calculate the phase coherence contribution to the magnetic response of mesoscopic metallic isolated networks. It is related to the return probability for a diffusive particle on the corresponding network. By solving the diffusion equation on various types of networks, including a ring with arms, an infinite square network or a chain of connected rings, we deduce the magnetic response. As it is the case for transport properties…
When a mesoscopic two dimensional four-terminal Hall cross-bar with Rashba and/or Dresselhaus spin-orbit interaction (SOI) is subjected to a perpendicular uniform magnetic field $B$, both integer quantum Hall effect (IQHE) and mesoscopic spin-Hall effect (MSHE) may exist when disorder strength $W$ in the sample is weak. We have calculated the low field "phase diagram" of MSHE in the $(B,W)$ plane for disordered samples in the IQHE regime. For weak disorder, MSHE conductance $G_{sH}$ and its fluctuations $rms(G_{SH})$ vanish identically on even numbered IQHE plateaus, they have finite values on…
Observation of Erratic Non-Hermitian Skin Effect in Phononic Crystals
Institute of Acoustics, School of Physics Science and Engineering, Tongji University（同济大学物理科学与工程学院声学研究所）；School of Advanced Manufacturing Engineering, Nanjing University（南京大学先进制造工程学院）
We study the disorder dependence of the phase coherence time of quasi one-dimensional wires and two-dimensional (2D) Hall bars fabricated from a high mobility GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructure. Using an original ion implantation technique, we can tune the intrinsic disorder felt by the 2D electron gas and continuously vary the system from the semi-ballistic regime to the localized one. In the diffusive regime, the phase coherence time follows a power law as a function of diffusion coefficient as expected in the Fermi liquid theory, without any sign of low temperature saturation. Surprisingly, in the…
Superconducting wires with broken time-reversal and spin-rotational symmetries can exhibit two distinct topological gapped phases and host bound Majorana states at the phase boundaries. When the wire is tuned to the transition between these two phases and the gap is closed, Majorana states become delocalized leading to a peculiar critical state of the system. We study transport properties of this critical state as a function of the length $L$ of a disordered multichannel wire. Applying a non-linear supersymmetric sigma model of symmetry class D with two replicas, we identify the average conduc…
The generalized bulk-boundary correspondence predicts the existence of the chiral hinge states in three-dimensional second-order topological insulators (3DSOTIs), resulting in a quantized Hall effect in three dimensions. Chiral hinge states in Hermitian 3DSOTIs are characterized by the quantized transmission coefficients with zero fluctuations, even in the presence of disorders. Here, we show that chiral hinge transport in disordered non-Hermitian systems deviates from the paradigm of the Hermitian case. Our numerical calculations prove the robustness of hinge states of disordered non-Hermitia…
Current noise in superconductor-normal metal-superconductor (SNS) junctions is calculated within the scattering theory of multiple Andreev reflections (MAR). It is shown that the noise exhibits subharmonic gap singularities at $eV=2Δ/n$, $n=1,2,... $ both in single-mode junctions with arbitrary transparency $D$ and in multi-mode disordered junctions. The subharmonic structure is superimposed with monotonic increase of the effective transferred charge $q^*=S_I(0)/2I$ with decreasing bias voltage. Other features of the noise include a step-like increase of $q^*$ in junctions with small $D$, and …
Symmetry-protected spectral topology in non-Hermitian systems has interesting manifestations such as dynamically anomalous chiral currents and skin effect. We study the interplay between symmetries and disorder in a paradigmatic model for spectral topology - the non-reciprocal Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model. We numerically study the effect of disorder in on-site and non-reciprocal hopping terms. Using a real-space winding number, we investigate the impact of disorder on the spectral topology and the anomalous chiral modes under periodic boundary conditions. We discover a remarkable robustness of c…
We use the Kubo-Landauer formalism to compute the longitudinal (two-terminal) conductance of a two dimensional electron system placed in a strong perpendicular magnetic field, and subjected to periodic modulations and/or disorder potentials. The scattering problem is recast as a set of inhomogeneous, coupled linear equations, allowing us to find the transmission probabilities from a finite-size system computation; the results are exact for non-interacting electrons. Our method fully accounts for the effects of the disorder and the periodic modulation, irrespective of their relative strength, a…
