Manipulating non-Hermitian skin effect via electric fields

TL;DR

This paper explores how electric fields influence the non-Hermitian skin effect (NHSE), revealing manipulation mechanisms through analytical and numerical methods, and proposes a circuit-based realization to deepen understanding.

Contribution

It demonstrates how dc and ac electric fields can manipulate NHSE via Stark and dynamic localization, and introduces a circuit scheme for experimental realization.

Findings

Electric fields can control NHSE behavior.

Size-dependent NHSE observed under dc fields.

Proposed electronic circuit for experimental study.

Abstract

In non-Hermitian systems, the phenomenon that the bulk-band eigenstates are accumulated at the boundaries of the systems under open boundary conditions is called non-Hermitian skin effect (NHSE), which is one of the most iconic and important features of a non-Hermitian system. In this work, we investigate the fate of NHSE in the presence of electric fields by analytically calculating the dynamical evolution of an initial bulk state and numerically computing the spectral winding number, the distributions of eigenstates, as well as the dynamical evolutions. We show abundant manipulation effects of dc and ac fields on the NHSE, and that the physical mechanism behind these effects is the interplay between the Stark localization, dynamic localization and the NHSE. In addition, the finite size analysis of the non-Hermitian system with a pure dc field shows the phenomenon of size-dependent NHSE. We further propose a scheme to realize the discussed model based on an electronic circuit. The results will help to deepen the understanding of NHSE and its manipulation.