Field Theoretical Study of Disorder in Non-Hermitian Topological Models

Abstract

Non-Hermitian systems have provided a rich platform to study unconventional topological phases.These phases are usually robust against external perturbations that respect certain symmetries of thesystem. In this work, we provide a new method to analytically study the effect of disorder, usingtools from quantum field theory applied to discrete models around phase-transition points. Weinvestigate two different one-dimensional models, the paradigmatic non-Hermitian SSH model andas-wave superconductor with imbalanced pairing. These analytic results are compared to numericalsimulations in the discrete models. An universal behavior is found for the two investigated models,namely that the systems are driven from a topological to a trivial phase for disorder strengths equalto about four times the energy scale of the model.