Eur. Phys. J. Plus (2022) 137: 780
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/s13360-022-03016-8

Regular Article

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

¹ Department of Physics, School of Applied Sciences, University of Science and Technology Meghalaya, 793101, Ri-Bhoi, India
² Physics and Applied Mathematics Unit, Indian Statistical Institute, 203 Barrackpore Trunk Road, 700108, Kolkata, India

^a sudinganguly@gmail.com

Received: 13 October 2021
Accepted: 27 June 2022
Published online: 6 July 2022

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 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–Büttiker approach.