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Coupling-induced nonunitary and unitary scattering in anti-PT-symmetric non-Hermitian systems

We investigate the properties of two anti-parity-time (anti-PT )-symmetric four-site scattering centers. The anti-PT -symmetric scattering center may have imaginary couplings, real couplings, and real on-site potentials. The only difference between the two scattering centers is the coupling between two central sites of the scattering center, which plays a crucial role in determining the parity of anti-PT symmetry and significantly affects the scattering properties. For the imaginary coupling, the even-parity anti-PT -symmetric scattering center possesses nonunitary scattering and the difference between the reflection and transmission is unity; for the real coupling, the odd-parity anti-PT -symmetric scattering center possesses unitary scattering and the sum of the reflection and transmission is unity. The coupling-induced different scattering behaviors are verified in the numerical simulations. Our findings reveal that a significant difference in the dynamics can be caused by a slight difference between two similar anti-PT -symmetric non-Hermitian scattering centers.