Supermetal-insulator transition in a non-Hermitian network model*

We study a non-Hermitian and nonunitary version of the two-dimensional Chalker-Coddington network model with balanced gain and loss. This model belongs to the class D^† with particle-hole symmetry^† and hosts both the non-Hermitian skin effect as well as exceptional points. By calculating its two-terminal transmission, we find a contact effect induced by the skin effect, which results in a nonquantized transmission for chiral edge states. In addition, the model exhibits an insulator to “supermetal” transition, across which the transmission changes from exponentially decaying with system size to exponentially growing with system size. In the clean system, the critical point separating insulator from supermetal is characterized by a non-Hermitian Dirac point that produces a quantized critical transmission of 4, instead of the value of 1 expected in Hermitian systems. This change in critical transmission is a consequence of the balanced gain and loss. When adding disorder to the system, we find a critical exponent for the divergence of the localization length ν≈1, which is the same as that characterizing the universality class of two-dimensional Hermitian systems in class D. Our work provides a way of exploring the localization behavior of non-Hermitian systems, by using network models, which in the past proved versatile tools to describe Hermitian physics.