Published August 4, 2025 | Version Online First
Journal Article Open

The non-Hermitian skin effect with three-dimensional long-range coupling

  • 1. ROR icon ETH Zurich
  • 2. ROR icon California Institute of Technology
  • 3. ROR icon University of Warwick
  • 4. ROR icon University of Oslo
  • 5. ROR icon Zhejiang University

Abstract

We study the non-Hermitian skin effect in a three-dimensional system of finitely many subwavelength resonators with an imaginary gauge potential. We introduce a discrete approximation of the eigenmodes and eigenfrequencies of the system in terms of the eigenvectors and eigenvalues of the so-called gauge capacitance matrix  CNγ, which is a dense matrix due to long-range interactions in the system. Based on translational invariance of this matrix and the decay of its off-diagonal entries, we prove the condensation of the eigenmodes at one edge of the structure by showing the exponential decay of its pseudo-eigenvectors. In particular, we consider a range k -approximation to keep the long-range interaction to a certain extent, thus obtaining a  k -banded gauge capacitance matrix CN,kγ. Using techniques for Toeplitz matrices and operators, we establish the exponential decay of the pseudo-eigenvectors of \CN,kγ and demonstrate that they approximate those of the gauge capacitance matrix CNγ well. Our results are numerically verified. In particular, we show that long-range interactions affect only the first eigenmodes in the system. As a result, a tridiagonal approximation of the gauge capacitance matrix, similar to the nearest-neighbour approximation in quantum mechanics, provides a good approximation for the higher modes.

Copyright and License

© 2025 European Mathematical Society.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China Grant Number
2024YFA1016000, the Swiss National Science Foundation Grant Number 200021–200307 and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) under grant number EP/X027422/1.

Data Availability

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available at https://
github.com/jinghaocao/skin_effect

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Caltech groups
Division of Engineering and Applied Science (EAS)
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In Press