Geometry-dependent skin effect and anisotropic Bloch oscillations in a non-Hermitian optical lattice

Abstract: The interplay between the non-Hermiticity and dimensionality gives rise to exotic characteristics in higher dimensions, with one representative phenomenon known as the geometry-dependent skin effect (GDSE), which refers to that the localization of extensive eigenstates depends on the system's geometry under open boundary conditions. In this paper, we demonstrate the emergence of GDSE in a two-dimensional $sp$ optical ladder lattice with on-site atom loss, which can be manifested by anisotropic dynamics of Bloch oscillations in the bulk of the system. By applying a static force in different directions, the wave-packet dynamics retrieve the complex energy spectra with either nonzero or zero spectral winding number, indicating the presence or absence of skin accumulation in the corresponding directions, respectively. Our results reveal that the GDSE has an intrinsic anisotropic bulk dynamics independent of boundary conditions, and offer its realization and detection in quantum systems.