Nodal arc of disordered Dirac fermions and non-Hermitian band theory

Abstract

© 2019 American Physical Society. We show that Dirac fermion systems in two dimensions generally exhibit a disorder-induced nodal arc replacing the nodal point and tilted Dirac cone, provided that the two components of the Dirac fermion correspond to two distinct orbitals unrelated by symmetry. This result is explicitly demonstrated using renormalization-group analysis in a disordered Dirac model that we introduce, where the disorder potential acts differently on the two orbitals. As we show by numerical simulations and self-consistent Born approximation calculation, this drives the system into a new strongly disordered phase.