Transport characteristics of a $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric non-Hermitian system: Effect of environmental interaction

TL;DR

This paper investigates how environmental interactions affect transport properties in a $\ ext{PT}$-symmetric non-Hermitian system, revealing impacts on currents and magnetic fields in a ring geometry using Green's function formalism.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed analysis of environmental effects on transport in non-Hermitian systems within a ring geometry, employing Green's function methods.

Findings

Environmental interactions modify transport currents and magnetic fields.

The system maintains certain transport characteristics despite environmental influence.

Green's function approach effectively captures environment-induced effects.

Abstract

The environmental influence is inevitable but often ignored in the study of electronic transport properties of small-scale systems. Such an environment-mediated interaction can generally be described by a parity-time symmetric non-Hermitian system with a balanced distribution of physical gain and loss. It is quite known in the literature that along with the conventional junction current, another current called bias-driven circular current can be established in a loop geometry depending upon the junction configuration. This current, further, induces a strong magnetic field that can even reach to few Tesla. What will happen to these quantities when the system interacts with its surrounding environment? Would it exhibit a detrimental response? We address such issues considering a two-terminal ring geometry where the junction setup is described within a tight-binding framework. All the transport quantities are evaluated using the standard Green's function formalism based on the Landauer-B\"{u}ttiker approach.