# 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.

Keywords : Localization, transmittance

PACS numbers: 05.40.+j, 42.25.Bs, 71.55.Jv, 72.15.Rn

e-mail address: asok@cmp.saha.ernet.in

The study of the spectra of systems with non-hermitean hamiltonians and of the interference of waves multiply scattered from such a system of scatterers have of late become very fasionable. The physical reason for such a description lies in the fact that the scattering in any real medium is never perfectly elastic and that in many cases the deviation from perfectly elastic scattering may be described, for example, by absorption through other inelastic channels or by amplification due to enhancement of the wave-amplitude (e.g., population inversion in an active medium) of incident particles or waves. We are interested in the class of non-hermitean hamiltonians in which the non-hermiticity is in the local part (typically in one-body potentials) . It is well known that an imaginary term in the local part of the hamiltonian behaves like a source or a sink (depending on the sign). It may be noted that this type of complex potentials, called optical potentials, have been extensively studied for isolated atoms in nuclear physics. For obvious reasons, a medium having scattering potentials with positive imaginary part $`\eta `$ (sink) at each site is called an absorbing medium and a medium with negative $`\eta `$ (source) it amplifying medium.

In a disordered chain with random but real-valued site-potentials, almost all the states are exponentially localized and hence an incident wave ($`e^{ikx}`$) propagating in the positive x-direction is completely backscattered due to the well-known localization effects . While a purely ordered chain with fixed absorbing site-potentials (sinks for particles) leads to an exponential decay of the transmittance (forward-scattering), one naively expects that the transmittance would increase indefitely if each of the fixed imaginary site-potentials is amplifying (source of particles). Interestingly, it was shown by the author  both analytically and numerically that asymptotically (in the large length limit) the transmittance decays exponentially in both the cases and that the asymptotic decay constants are identical for an absorbing and an amplifying chain with the same magnitude ($`|\eta |`$) for the strength of the non-hermitean term. This somewhat surprising duality between the amplifying and the absorbing (ordered) cases was confirmed later by Paasschens et al  for a classical Helmholtz equation describing propagation of radiation (light) through a medium with a complex dielectric constant. While the above duality was originally obtained  for a tight binding hamiltonian, recently we  observed the same generic behavior for an ordered Schrodinger hamiltonian as well. Generically, the transmittance decays monotonically with length for an absorbing chain, while it increases in an oscillatory fashion for an amplifying chain upto a length determined by $`|\eta |`$, beyond which the transmittance decays exponentially. The study of disorder in all the works considered so far has been constrained to the real part of the (local) potential (dielectric constant, in the classical case). In this work, we generalize over our work in  and consider the effects of randomness in the amplification/ absorption (imaginary disorder at each site.

We consider a quantum chain of $`N`$ lattice points (lattice constant unity), represented by the standard single band, tight binding equation:

$$(Eϵ_n)c_n=V(c_{n1}+c_{n+1}).$$
(1)   
To calculate transport, we consider a open quantum system which consists of the above chain coupled to the external world (two reservoirs at a very slightly different electrochemical potentials) with two identical semi-infinite perfect leads on either side. Here $`E`$ is the fermionic energy, $`V`$ is the constant nearest neighbor hopping term which is the same in both the leads and the sample, $`ϵ_n`$ is the site-energy, and $`c_n`$ is the site amplitude at the $`n`$th site. Without any loss of generality, we choose $`ϵ_n=0`$ in the leads and $`V=1`$ to set the energy scale. Inside the sample, we choose $`ϵ_n=ϵ_r+iϵ_i`$ where both the real and the imaginary parts could be random, and $`i=\sqrt{1}`$. For the purpose of this work, there is no disorder in the real part and we take for simplicity $`ϵ_r=0`$. The imaginary part $`ϵ_i`$ has the form $`[\eta W_i/2,\eta +W_i/2]`$, where the constant part $`\eta `$ may be either positive or negative, or zero and $`W_i`$ is the width of the uniform random distribution in $`ϵ_i`$. The complex transmission amplitude in the ordered case ($`W_i=0`$) was calculated in  to be

$$t_A=\frac{(e^{ik_s}e^\gamma e^{ik_s}e^\gamma )(e^{ik}e^{ik})e^{ik(L+2)}}{de^{ik_sL}e^{\gamma L}ce^{ik_sL}e^{\gamma L}},$$
(2)   
where

$$c=(e^{ik_sik}e^\gamma 1)^2,d=(e^{ik_sik}e^\gamma 1)^2,$$
(3)   
and the decay length $`1/|\gamma |=l_a`$ and the wave-vector $`k_s`$ are given by

$$E=2\mathrm{c}\mathrm{o}\mathrm{s}k=(e^\gamma +e^\gamma )\mathrm{cos}k_s,$$
(4)   
and

$$\eta =(e^\gamma e^\gamma )\mathrm{sin}k_s.$$
(5)   
The transmittance or the two-probe conductance $`T=g_2=|t_A|^2`$ obtained from the Eq.(2) is found to decay monotonically (exponentially) towards zero for a set of absorbers ($`\eta >0`$). But, for a set of amplifiers ($`\eta <0`$), $`g_2`$ increases first to a high value but eventually (for large $`L`$) decays as $`t_Ae^{|\gamma |L}`$.

Disorder in the real part ($`ϵ_r`$) in 1D is well-known to give rise to an exponential decay . Let us consider the case of a disorder in the imaginary term of the potential with $`\eta =0`$, but $`W_i0`$. It may be noted that in this case (for a long enough chain), about half of the sites act as absorbers ($`\eta >0`$) and about half as amplifiers ($`\eta <0`$). Then as discussed above, the net contribution to the transmittance from all the sites would essentially be decaying with a superposition of various decay constants. The modes with the fastest decay rates will possibly dominate the net transmittance. When $`\eta 0`$, the distribution of all the decay constants would be asymmetric, and the net decay constant is expected to be somewhat different from the $`\eta =0`$ case. In the Fig. 1, we have shown the various cases with $`\eta =0.01`$ and $`W_i=0.3`$. We find that the pure imaginary case ($`\eta =0.01`$, $`W_i=0`$) gives rise to a decay length $`1/2\gamma =100`$ as obtained from the equations above. For the symmetrically disordered case ($`\eta =0`$, $`W_i=0.3`$), the decay length is about 440. Clearly the latter decay length in the disordered case is much larger than the same for the pure imaginary case (somewhat counter-intuitive). Finally for the asymmetrically disordered case ($`\eta =0.01`$, $`W_i=0.3`$), then decay length is about 120 which is in between the two extreme cases.

In the Fig. 2, we have considered another situation with the same $`\eta =0.01`$ but a different disorder $`W_i=0.7`$. For the symmetrical disorder case ($`\eta =0`$, $`W_i=0.7`$), the decay length is about 85 which is smaller than that in that in the pure imaginary case. Indeed, this is what one normally expects to be the role played by disorder (in the real part). Further, in contrast to that of Fig. 1, the transmittance decays faster in the asymmetrically disordered cases ($`\eta =\pm 0.01`$, $`W_i=0.7`$) than in the symmetrically disordered case ($`\eta =0`$, $`W_i=0.7`$), the decay length in the former being about 80.

To summarise, we have studied the transmittance through a 1D chain with randomly amplifying and/ or absorbing site-potentials at each site. We find that in contrast to the real disordered potential case, the decay of transmittance (exponential localization) could be slower in the complex disordered case (compared to the complex ordered case). This, in particular, implies that the scattering from the disorder of this type (i.e., imaginary) may never be incoherent. Thus, there is no cut-off length scale for a crossover from a localized to a diffusive behaviour even when the chain consists of both absorbing as well as amplifying local potentials in a random fashion.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the organisers of the CM Days 97, and the warm hospitality of the Department of Physics, Vishwa-Bharati University, Santiniketan, during the progress of the workshop.

Figure Captions:

Fig.1 The variation of the logarithmic transmittance as a function of $`L`$ in units of the lattice constant for various combinations of $`\eta =0`$, $`W_i=0.3`$. There is no disorder in the real part of the site-energy. The pure absorbing/ amplifying case means that $`\eta =\pm 0.01`$, $`W_i=0`$; the symmetric disordered case means that $`\eta =0`$, $`W_i=0.3`$; and the asymmetric disordered absorbing/ amplifying case imply $`\eta =\pm 0.01`$, $`W_i=0.3`$. Note that the transmittance decays faster in the pure cases than in the disordered ones.

Fig.2 The same as in Fig. 1, but for different combinations of $`\eta =\pm 0.01`$, $`W_i=0.7`$. Again, there is no disorder in the real part of the site-energy. For these parameters, the transmittance decays faster for the (imaginary) disordered cases than in the pure ones.