Topological aspects of non-Hermitian physics

The past decades have witnessed an explosion of interest in topological materials, and a lot of mathematical concepts have been introduced in condensed matter physics. Among them, the bulk-boundary correspondence is the central topic in topological physics, which has inspired researchers to focus on boundary physics. Recently, the concepts of topological phases have been extended to non-Hermitian Hamiltonians, whose eigenvalues can be complex. Besides the topology, non-Hermiticity can also cause a boundary phenomenon called the non-Hermitian skin effect, which is an extreme sensitivity of the spectrum to the boundary condition. In this talk, I will explain recent developments in non-Hermitian topological physics by focusing mainly on the boundary problem. As well as the competition between non-Hermitian and topological boundary phenomena, I will discuss the topological nature inherent in non-Hermiticity itself.

Field: condensed matter physics
Keywords: topological materials, non-Hermitian systems, skin effect, bulk-boundary correspondence