Fate of Majorana zero modes, critical states and non-conventional real-complex transition in non-Hermitian quasiperiodic lattices

Abstract: We study a one-dimensional $p$-wave superconductor subject to non-Hermitian quasiperiodic potentials. Although the existence of the non-Hermiticity, the Majorana zero mode is still robust against the disorder perturbation. The analytic topological phase boundary is verified by calculating the energy gap closing point and the topological invariant. Furthermore, we investigate the localized properties of this model, revealing that the topological phase transition is accompanied with the Anderson localization phase transition, and a wide critical phase emerges with amplitude increments of the non-Hermitian quasiperiodic potentials. Finally, we numerically uncover a non-conventional real-complex transition of the energy spectrum, which is different from the conventional $\mathcal{PT}$ symmetric transition.