Exceptional Non-Hermitian Phases in Disordered Quantum Wires

Abstract: We demonstrate the occurrence of nodal non-Hermitian (NH) phases featuring exceptional degeneracies in chiral-symmetric disordered quantum wires, where NH physics naturally arises from the self-energy in a disorder-averaged Green's function description. Notably, we find that at least two nodal points in the clean Hermitian system are required for exceptional points to be effectively stabilized upon adding disorder. We identify and study experimental signatures of our theoretical findings both in the spectral functions and in mesoscopic quantum transport properties of the considered systems. Our results are quantitatively corroborated and exemplified by numerically exact simulations on a microscopic lattice model. The proposed setting provides a conceptually minimal framework for the realization and study of topological NH phases in quantum many-body systems.