Electronic transport in a randomly amplifying and absorbing chain

Abstract

We study localization properties of a one-dimensional disordered system characterized by a random non-hermitean hamiltonian where both the randomness and the non-hermiticity arises in the local site-potential; its real part being ordered (fixed), and a random imaginary part implying the presence of either a random absorption or amplification at each site. The transmittance (forward scattering) decays exponentially in either case. In contrast to the disorder in the real part of the potential (Anderson localization), the transmittance with the disordered imaginary part may decay slower than that in the case of ordered imaginary part.