Non-Hermitian Cooperation Induced Chern Insulator

Abstract

Conventional Chern insulators rely on breaking time-reversal symmetry via magnetic fields or synthetic gauge fields. Here we introduce a fundamentally different paradigm: a static lattice without any gauge field becomes a Chern insulator solely through the cooperation of two non-Hermitian ingredients: on-site loss and non-reciprocal coupling. Neither effect alone suffices; only their synergy opens a topological gap and gives rise to robust chiral edge states with a nonzero Chern number. The underlying mechanism originates from a non-Hermitian chiral molecule formed by the lossy sites, whose dynamically dominant mode carries an orbital angular momentum that effectively generates a synthetic flux after the fast-decaying degrees of freedom are eliminated. Our results establish non-Hermitian cooperation as a versatile resource for inducing Chern topology without external fields or temporal modulations, opening a new route to topological phases in open classical and quantum systems.

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BibTeX RIS

BibTeX

@misc{zhu2026nonhermitian,
  title = {{Non-Hermitian Cooperation Induced Chern Insulator}},
  author = {Weiwei Zhu and Bingbing Wang and Mengxiang Xie and Hong-yu Zou and Yang Long and Hong-xiang Sun and Haoran Xue and Jie Ren},
  howpublished = {arXiv},
  year = {2026},
  month = oct,
  doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.09413},
  eprint = {2610.09413},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.09413},
  note = {CC BY 4.0},
}

RIS

TY  - UNPB
TI  - Non-Hermitian Cooperation Induced Chern Insulator
AU  - Weiwei Zhu
AU  - Bingbing Wang
AU  - Mengxiang Xie
AU  - Hong-yu Zou
AU  - Yang Long
AU  - Hong-xiang Sun
AU  - Haoran Xue
AU  - Jie Ren
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/10/07
PB  - arXiv
DO  - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.09413
UR  - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.09413
AB  - Conventional Chern insulators rely on breaking time-reversal symmetry via magnetic fields or synthetic gauge fields. Here we introduce a fundamentally different paradigm: a static lattice without any gauge field becomes a Chern insulator solely through the cooperation of two non-Hermitian ingredients: on-site loss and non-reciprocal coupling. Neither effect alone suffices; only their synergy opens a topological gap and gives rise to robust chiral edge states with a nonzero Chern number. The underlying mechanism originates from a non-Hermitian chiral molecule formed by the lossy sites, whose dynamically dominant mode carries an orbital angular momentum that effectively generates a synthetic flux after the fast-decaying degrees of freedom are eliminated. Our results establish non-Hermitian cooperation as a versatile resource for inducing Chern topology without external fields or temporal modulations, opening a new route to topological phases in open classical and quantum systems.
ER  -

Abstract

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