Restoration of the non-Hermitian bulk-boundary correspondence via topological amplification

Autor(en)

Matteo Brunelli, Clara C. Wanjura, Andreas Nunnenkamp

Abstrakt

Non-Hermitian (NH) lattice Hamiltonians display a unique kind of energy gap and extreme sensitivity to boundary conditions. Due to the NH skin effect, the separation between edge and bulk states is blurred and the (conventional) bulk-boundary correspondence is lost. Here, we restore the bulk-boundary correspondence for the most paradigmatic class of NH Hamiltonians, namely those with one complex band and without symmetries. We obtain the desired NH Hamiltonian from the mean-field evolution of driven-dissipative cavity arrays, in which NH terms—in the form of non-reciprocal hopping amplitudes, gain and loss—are explicitly modeled via coupling to (engineered and non-engineered) reservoirs. This approach removes the arbitrariness in the definition of the topological invariant, as point-gapped spectra differing by a complex-energy shift are not treated as equivalent; the origin of the complex plane provides a common reference (base point) for the evaluation of the topological invariant. This implies that topologically non-trivial Hamiltonians are only a strict subset of those with a point gap and that the NH skin effect does not have a topological origin. We analyze the NH Hamiltonians so obtained via the singular value decomposition, which allows to express the NH bulk-boundary correspondence in the following simple form: an integer value ν of the topological invariant defined in the bulk corresponds to |ν| singular vectors exponentially localized at the system edge under open boundary conditions, in which the sign of ν determines which edge. Non-trivial topology manifests as directional amplification of a coherent input with gain exponential in system size. Our work solves an outstanding problem in the theory of NH topological phases and opens up new avenues in topological photonics.

Organisation(en)

Quantenoptik, Quantennanophysik und Quanteninformation

Externe Organisation(en)

Universität Basel, University of Cambridge, Max-Planck-Institut für die Physik des Lichts

Journal

SciPost Physics

Band

15

Anzahl der Seiten

37

ISSN

2542-4653

DOI

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2207.12427

Publikationsdatum

10-2023

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

103025 Quantenmechanik

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

Allgemeine Physik und Astronomie

Link zum Portal

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/18302580-52d3-4c90-9efd-075e4ec433a2