2023/11/07 by Jin, Wei-Wu, Jin Liu, Liu, Jin +10 · 5 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Disordered Systems and Neural Networks (cond-mat.dis-nn) #FOS: Physical sciences #Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) #Quantum Mechanics and Non-Hermitian Physics #Quantum chaos and dynamical systems #Quantum, superfluid, helium dynamics
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2311.03777
openalex publication_date 2023/11/07 · openalex created_date 2023/11/09 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Disorder and non-Hermitian effects together can upend how waves localize. In a 1D disordered chain, the non-Hermitian skin effect (NHSE) can induce Anderson delocalization, defying the usual rule that disorder in low dimensions always localizes states. While weak disorder leaves the NHSE intact, strong disorder restores Anderson localization. Here, we study a surprising twist: coupling a strongly disordered Hatano-Nelson chain to a disordered Hermitian chain with their disorder anti-symmetrically correlated. Strikingly, once the inter-chain coupling exceeds a threshold, the system undergoes Anderson delocalization irrespective of disorder strength, reinstating the NHSE with no Hermitian counterpart. This transition arises from the interplay of non-reciprocal hopping, inter-chain coupling, and engineered disorder correlations, and is captured by a real-space winding number. To confirm this, we build an electrical-circuit analog and directly observe the re-emergent NHSE via voltage measurements. Our work uncovers unexplored and experimentally accessible physics at the crossroads of non-Hermiticity and disorder.