Topology and its detection in a dissipative Aharonov-Bohm chain

TL;DR

This paper characterizes the topology of a dissipative Aharonov-Bohm chain, demonstrating how atom-injection spectroscopy can reveal its edge states and band structure, aiding future studies of non-Hermitian topological systems.

Contribution

It provides a systematic analysis of the topological features of the dissipative AB chain beyond current experiments and proposes new detection schemes for topological states.

Findings

Atom-injection spectroscopy reveals topological edge states.

The band structure can be mapped using spectroscopy.

Alternative dynamic detection schemes are proposed.

Abstract

In a recent experiment, a dissipative Aharaonov-Bohm (AB) chain was implemented in the momentum space of a Bose-Einstein condensate. Formed by a series of dissipative AB rings threaded by synthetic magnetic flux, the chain exhibits the non-Hermitian skin effect, necessitating the non-Bloch band theory to account for its topology. In this work, we systematically characterize topological features of the dissipative AB chain, particularly beyond the experimentally realized parameter regime. Further, we show that an atom-injection spectroscopy is not only capable of revealing topological edge states, as has been demonstrated in the experiment, but also the general band structure of the system. We then discuss alternative dynamic detection schemes for the topological edge states. Given the generality of the model and the detection schemes, our work is helpful to future study of topological models with non-Hermitian skin effects across a variety of quantum simulators.