Hinge non-Hermitian skin effect in the single-particle properties of a strongly correlated f-electron system

Abstract

Non-Hermitian systems exhibit novel phenomena without Hermitian counterparts, such as exceptional points and the non-Hermitian skin effect. These non-Hermitian topological phenomena are observable in single-particle excitations of correlated systems in equilibrium, which are described by Green's functions. In this paper we demonstrate the appearance of the hinge non-Hermitian skin effect in the effective Hamiltonian that describes the single-particle properties of an $f$-electron system. Skin effects result in a strong sensitivity to boundary conditions, and a large number of eigenstates localize at one boundary when open boundary conditions are applied. Our system exhibits such sensitivity and hosts skin modes localized around hinges. This hinge skin effect is induced by a non-Hermitian topology of the surface Brillouin zone. The hinge skin modes are observed for one-dimensional subsystems located between one pair of exceptional points in the surface Brillouin zone. This paper highlights that correlated materials are an exciting platform for analyzing non-Hermitian phenomena.