Non-Hermitian skin effect and chiral damping in open quantum systems

Understand

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 condition but exponential under open boundary condition.