No Arabic abstract
We investigate, using a microwave platform consisting of a non-Hermitian Su-Schrieffer-Heeger array of coupled dielectric resonators, the interplay of a lossy nonlinearity and CT-symmetry in the formation of defect modes. The measurements agree with the theory which predicts that, up to moderate pumping, the defect mode is an eigenstate of the CT-symmetric operator and retains its frequency at the center of the gap. At higher pumping values, the system undergoes a self-induced explicit CT-symmetry violation which removes the spectral topological protection and alters the shape of the defect mode.
We employ electric circuit networks to study topological states of matter in non-Hermitian systems enriched by parity-time symmetry $mathcal{PT}$ and chiral symmetry anti-$mathcal{PT}$ ($mathcal{APT}$). The topological structure manifests itself in the complex admittance bands which yields excellent measurability and signal to noise ratio. We analyze the impact of $mathcal{PT}$ symmetric gain and loss on localized edge and defect states in a non-Hermitian Su--Schrieffer--Heeger (SSH) circuit. We realize all three symmetry phases of the system, including the $mathcal{APT}$ symmetric regime that occurs at large gain and loss. We measure the admittance spectrum and eigenstates for arbitrary boundary conditions, which allows us to resolve not only topological edge states, but also a novel $mathcal{PT}$ symmetric $mathbb{Z}_2$ invariant of the bulk. We discover the distinct properties of topological edge states and defect states in the phase diagram. In the regime that is not $mathcal{PT}$ symmetric, the topological defect state disappears and only reemerges when $mathcal{APT}$ symmetry is reached, while the topological edge states always prevail and only experience a shift in eigenvalue. Our findings unveil a future route for topological defect engineering and tuning in non-Hermitian systems of arbitrary dimension.
A single unit cell contains all the information about the bulk system, including the topological feature. The topological invariant can be extracted from a finite system, which consists of several unit cells under certain environment, such as a non-Hermitian external field. We investigate a non- Hermitian finite-size Kitaev chain with PT-symmetric chemical potentials. Exact solution at the symmetric point shows that Majorana edge modes can emerge as the coalescing states at exceptional points and PT symmetry breaking states. The coalescing zero mode is the finite-size projection of the conventional degenerate zero modes in a Hermitian infinite system with the open boundary condition. It indicates a variant of the bulk-edge correspondence: The number of Majorana edge modes in a finite non-Hermitian system can be the topological invariant to identify the topological phase of the corresponding bulk Hermitian system.
We show that Maxwells demon-like nonreciprocity can be supported in a class of non-Hermitian gyrotropic metasurfaces in the linear regime. The proposed metasurface functions as a transmission-only Maxwells demon operating at a pair of photon energies. Based on multiple scattering theory, we construct a dual-dipole model to explain the underlying mechanism that leads to the antisymmetric nonreciprocal transmission. The results may inspire new designs of compact nonreciprocal devices for photonics.
In this letter, we investigate the effects of non-Hermitian driving on quantum coherence in a bipartite system. The results that the dynamical localization destroyed by the Hermitian interaction revives are an evidence of the restoration of quantum coherence by non-Hermitian driving. Besides, the entanglement between the two subsystems also decays with the boosting of non-hermitian driving strength, which provides another evidence that non-Hermitian driving will protect quantum coherence. The physics behind this phenomenon is the domination of the quasieigenstate with maximum imaginary value of the quasieigenvalue on the dynamics of the non-Hermitian system. Our discovery establishes a restoration mechanism of quantum coherence in interacting and dissipative quantum systems, which is highly relevant to experiments in diverse fields from many-body physics to quantum information.
Non-Hermitian topological systems exhibit a plethora of unusual topological phenomena that are absent in the Hermitian systems. One of these key features is the extreme eigenstate localization of eigenstates, also known as non-Hermitian skin effect (NHSE), which occurs in open chains. However, many new and peculiar non-Hermitian characteristics of the eigenstates and eigenvlaues that emerge when two such non-Hermitian chains are coupled together remain largely unexplored. Here, we report various new avenues of eigenstate localization in coupled non-Hermitian chains with dissimilar inverse skin lengths in which the NHSE can be switched on and off by the inter-chain coupling amplitude. A very small inter-chain strength causes the NHSE to be present at both ends of an anti-symmetric coupled system because of the weak hybridization of the eigenstates of the individual chains. The eigenspectrum under open boundary conditions (OBC) exhibits a discontinuous jump known as the critical NHSE (CNHSE) as its size increases. However, when the hybridization between eigenstates becomes significant in a system with strong inter-chain coupling, the NHSE and CNHSE vanish. Moreover, a peculiar half-half skin localization occurs in composite chains with opposite signs of inverse decay lengths, where half of the eigenstates are exponentially localized at one chain and the remainder of the eigenstates on the other chain. Our results provide a new twist and insights for non-Hermitian phenomena in coupled non-Hermitian systems.