Emergent momentum-space topological pseudospin defects in non-Hermitian systems

Topological defects are central to modern physics, from spintronics to photonics, due to their robustness and potential application in information processing. In this work, we discuss topological point defects that spontaneously emerge at the imaginary Fermi arcs (spectral degeneracy lines) in momentum space of two-dimensional systems described by non-Hermitian effective Hamiltonians. In particular, we consider a generic non-Hermitian Dirac model and a phenomenological model describing hybrid light-matter quasiparticles - exciton polaritons hosted in an optical microcavity. In both cases, the eigenenergies of the system have both real and imaginary parts and form two distinct bands corresponding to two (pseudo-)spin states. We describe the trajectories of the point defects characterized by integer-valued topological winding (vorticity) analytically and show that the defects with opposite vorticity annihilate with each other in the fully gapped phases, but are protected from annihilation by the non-Hermitian spectral degeneracies (exceptional and hybrid points) in the gapless phases. We also suggest that the signatures of these defects can be experimentally measured in an exciton-polariton system.