Disorder-driven phase transition in the second-order non-Hermitian skin effect

Abstract

The non-Hermitian skin effect exhibits a collapse of extended bulk modes into an extensive number of localized boundary states in the open boundary condition. Here, we demonstrate a disorder-driven phase transition of a trivial non-Hermitian system to the higher-order non-Hermitian skin effect phase. In contrast to clean systems, the disorder-induced boundary modes form an arc in the complex energy plane, which is a manifestation of the disorder-driven energy-dependent phase transition. At the phase transition, localized corner modes and bulk modes characterized by trivial Hamiltonians coexist within a single band, while they remain separated in the complex energy plane. This behavior is analogous to the mobility edge phenomena in disordered Hermitian systems. Using effective medium theory and numerical diagonalizations, we provide a systematic characterization of the disorder-driven phase transition.