Physical Review Research (Apr 2021)

Universal Hall conductance scaling in non-Hermitian Chern insulators

  • Solofo Groenendijk,
  • Thomas L. Schmidt,
  • Tobias Meng

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.3.023001
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 3, no. 2
p. 023001

Abstract

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We investigate the Hall conductance of a two-dimensional Chern insulator coupled to an environment causing gain and loss. Introducing a biorthogonal linear response theory, we show that sufficiently strong gain and loss lead to a characteristic nonanalytical contribution to the Hall conductance. Near its onset, this contribution exhibits a universal power law with a power 3/2 as a function of Dirac mass, chemical potential, and gain strength. Our results pave the way for the study of non-Hermitian topology in fermionic transport experiments.