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arXiv:2305.03891 · Physical Review Research

Many-body non-Hermitian skin effect under dynamic gauge coupling

Haowei Li, H. Wu, Wei Zheng, Wei Yi

Published Sep 8, 2023• 32 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We study an atom-cavity hybrid system where fermionic atoms in a one-dimensional lattice are subject to a cavity-induced dynamic gauge potential. The gauge coupling leads to highly degenerate steady states in which the fermions accumulate to one edge of the lattice under an open boundary condition. Such a phenomenon originates from the many-body Liouvillian superoperator of the system, which, being intrinsically non-Hermitian, is unstable against boundary perturbations and manifests the non-Hermitian skin effect. Contrary to the single-body case, the steady state of a multiatom system is approached much slower under the open boundary condition, as the long-time damping of the cavity mode exhibits distinct rates at different times. This stagewise slowdown is attributed to the competition between light-assisted hopping and the dynamic gauge coupling, which significantly reduces the steady-state degeneracy under the open boundary condition, as distinct hosts of quasisteady states dominate the dynamics at different timescales.

DOI
10.1103/physrevresearch.5.033173

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We study an atom-cavity hybrid system where fermionic atoms in a one-dimensional lattice are subject to a cavity-induced dynamic gauge potential. The gauge coupling leads to highly degenerate steady states in which the fermions accumulate to one edge of the lattice under an open boundary condition. Such a phenomenon originates from the many-body Liouvillian superoperator of the system, which, being intrinsically non-Hermitian, is unstable against boundary perturbations and manifests the non-Hermitian skin effect. Contrary to the single-body case, the steady state of a multiatom system is approached much slower under the open boundary condition, as the long-time damping of the cavity mode exhibits distinct rates at different times. This stagewise slowdown is attributed to the competition between light-assisted hopping and the dynamic gauge coupling, which significantly reduces the steady-state degeneracy under the open boundary condition, as distinct hosts of quasisteady states dominate the dynamics at different timescales.
The non-Hermitian skin effect, in which eigenstates of non-Hermitian Hamiltonians are localized at one boundary in the open boundary condition, has attracted great interest recently. In this paper, we investigate the skin effect in one-dimensional dissipative quantum many-body systems, which we call the Liouvillian skin effect (LSE). We rigorously identify the existence of the LSE for generalized boundary conditions by solving the Liouvillian superoperator of an exactly solvable model with the advantage of the Bethe ansatz. The LSE is sensitive to boundary conditions where the signature is reflected in eigenfunctions of the system. We confirm that the LSE is fragile to a tiny coflow boundary hopping with non-Hermitian current but can survive a counterflow boundary hopping in the thermodynamic limit. Our work provides a prototypical example of exactly solvable dissipative quantum many-body lattice systems exhibiting the LSE for generalized boundary conditions. It can be further extended to other integrable open quantum many-body models.
We introduce a dissipative lattice gauge model that exhibits the many-body version of the non-Hermitian skin effect. The dissipative couplings between dynamical gauge fields on the lattice links and the surrounding environment generate chiral motions of particles residing on lattice sites. Despite the complexity arising from many-body interactions, the local gauge symmetry enables the exact construction of a steady state that displays the many-body non-Hermitian skin effect. Furthermore, our approach can be generalized to realize a new type of many-body non-Hermitian skin effect, dubbed the hierarchical skin effect, where different subsystem degrees of freedom exhibit boundary accumulation of multiple moments at different orders. Our findings can be readily observed by engineering dissipation in state-of-the-art lattice gauge simulators.
One of the unique features of non-Hermitian Hamiltonians is the non-Hermitian skin effect, namely, that the eigenstates are exponentially localized at the boundary of the system. For open quantum systems, a short-time evolution can often be well described by the effective non-Hermitian Hamiltonians, while long-time dynamics calls for the Lindblad master equations, in which the Liouvillian superoperators generate time evolution. In this Letter, we find that Liouvillian superoperators can exhibit the non-Hermitian skin effect, and uncover its unexpected physical consequences. It is shown that the non-Hermitian skin effect dramatically shapes the long-time dynamics, such that the damping in a class of open quantum systems is algebraic under periodic boundary conditions but exponential under open boundary conditions. Moreover, the non-Hermitian skin effect and non-Bloch bands cause a chiral damping with a sharp wave front. These phenomena are beyond the effective non-Hermitian Hamiltonians; instead, they belong to the non-Hermitian physics of full-fledged open quantum dynamics.
The non-Hermitian skin effect describes the phenomenon of exponential localization of single-particle eigenstates near the boundary of the system. We consider its generalization to the many-body regime by investigating a general class of interacting fermion lattice models in Markovian open quantum systems. Therein, the elementary excitations from the "vacuum" (steady state) are given by two types of dissipative fermionic modes composed of single-fermion operators, which govern the long-time nonequilibrium dynamics. We perturbatively calculate the self-energy matrix of these bare modes in the presence of interactions, and utilize the non-Bloch band theory to derive an exact integral representation. By imposing complex momentum conservation, we obtain a simplified expression for corrections to Liouvillian spectrum that agrees well with numerical calculations to high precision. We further perform perturbative analysis of Liouvillian eigenstates and identify signatures of interaction-enhanced NHSE at the quasiparticle level, manifested as renormalization of the generalized Brillouin zone. Our results establish a diagrammatic framework for dissipative interacting fermions with non-Hermitian skin effect in a description of full-fledged Lindblad master equations, which resembles Fermi liquid theory in terms of interaction-dressed quasiparticles.
Non-Hermitian systems with globally reciprocal couplings -- such as the Hatano-Nelson model with stochastic imaginary gauge fields -- avoid the conventional non-Hermitian skin effect, displaying erratic bulk localization while retaining ballistic transport. An open question is whether similar behavior arises when non-reciprocity originates at the Liouvillian level rather than from an effective non-Hermitian Hamiltonian obtained via post-selection. Here, a lattice model with globally reciprocal Liouvillian dynamics and locally asymmetric incoherent hopping is investigated, a disordered setting in which Liouvillian-specific effects have remained largely unexplored. While the steady state again shows disorder-dependent, erratic localization without boundary accumulation, {\color{black}excitations in the incoherent-hopping regime spread via {\em Sinai-type subdiffusion}, dramatically slower than ordinary diffusion in symmetric stochastic lattices.} {\color{black}This highlights that the genuinely distinct Liouvillian signature is the coexistence of global reciprocity with ultra-slow, disorder-induced subdiffusive transport, rather than the erratic localization itself.} {\color{black}These results reveal a fundamental distinction between globally reciprocal Hamiltonian and Liouvillian systems: in both cases the skin effect is suppressed, but only in Liouvillian dynamics erratic skin localization can coexist with subdiffusive transport
It has been found that in certain non-Hermitian Hamiltonian systems, all the eigenstates can have their amplitudes concentrating to the open boundaries of the systems and decaying exponentially into the bulk, which is totally different from their counterparts in Hermitian systems. This phenomenon has been called the ``non-Hermitian skin effect.'' Later, certain homogeneous open systems obeying the quadratic Lindblad equation have been shown to exhibit the non-Hermitian skin effect as well. The effect is manifested in the ``chiral damping'' phenomenon as the particle populations, decaying from their initial uniform unity values, show asymmetry with respect to the open boundaries. However, how such asymmetry can emerge in the homogeneous open systems awaits further understanding. Here we employ an adjoint fermion formalism to study quadratic Lindbladian systems. We find that in such homogeneous open systems, while the long time steady state and the normal modes on top of it do not show the asymmetry, it is the interference between the biexcitations of the normal modes that gives rise to the non-Hermitian skin effect. We introduce the spectral function which clearly exhibits the interference pattern. We identify that the central structure of the spectral function crucially determines the feature of the non-Hermitian skin effect.