Edge state, bound state, and anomalous dynamics in the Aubry-André-Harper system coupled to non-Markovian baths

Abstract

Bound states and their influence on the dynamics of an one-dimensional tight-binding system subject to environments are studied in this paper. We identify specifically three kinds of bound states. The first is a discrete bound state (DBS), of which the energy level exhibits a gap from the continuum. The DBS exhibits the similar features of localization as the edge states in the system and thus can suppress the decay of system. The second is a bound state in the continuum (BIC), which can suppress the system decay too. It is found that the BIC is intimately connected to the edge mode of the system since both of them show almost the same features of localization and energy. The third one displays a large gap from the continuum and behaves extendible (not localized). Moreover the population of the system on this state decays partly but not all of them does. This is different from the two former bound states. The time evolution of a single excitation in the system is studied in order to illustrate the influence of the bound states. We found that both DBS and BIC play an important role in the time evolution, for example, the excitation becomes localized and not decay depending on the overlap between the initial state and the DBS or BIC. Furthermore we observe that the single excitation takes a long-range hopping when the system falls into the regime of strong localizations. This feature can be understood as the interplay of system localizations and the bath-induced long-range correlation.