Inner skin effects on non-Hermitian topological fractals

Abstract

Non-Hermitian (NH) crystals, quasicrystals, and amorphous network display an accumulation of a macroscopic number of states near one of its specific interfaces with vacuum, such as edge, surface, hinge, or corner. This phenomenon is known as the NH skin effect, which can only be observed with open boundary condition. In this regard self-similar fractals, manifesting inner boundaries in the interior of the system, harbor a novel phenomenon, the inner skin effect (ISE). Then the NH skin effect appears at the inner boundaries of the fractal lattice with periodic boundary condition. We showcase this observation by implementing prominent models for NH insulators and superconductors on representative planar Sierpinski carpet fractal lattices. They accommodate both first-order and second-order ISEs at inner edges and corners, respectively, for charged as well as neutral Majorana fermions. Furthermore, over extended parameter regimes ISEs are tied with nontrivial bulk topological invariants, yielding intrinsic ISEs. With the recent success in engineering NH topological phases on highly tunable metamaterial platforms, such as photonic and phononic lattices, as well as topolectric circuits, the proposed ISEs can be observed experimentally at least on fractal metamaterials with periodic boundary condition.