Observation of dislocation bound states and skin effects in non-Hermitian Chern insulators

Abstract

The confluence of non-Hermitian (NH) topology and crystal defects has culminated significant interest, yet its experimental exploration has been limited due to the challenges involved in design and measurements. Here, we showcase experimental observation of NH dislocation bound states (NHDS) and the dislocation-induced NH skin effect in two-dimensional acoustic NH Chern lattices. By embedding an edge dislocations-antidislocation pair in such acoustic lattices and implementing precision-controlled hopping and onsite gain/loss via active meta-atoms, we reveal robust defect-bound states localized at dislocation cores within the line gap of the complex energy spectrum. We experimentally identify the emergence of bulk exceptional points (EPs) via spectral coalescence and phase rigidity analysis. We demonstrate that the NHDS survive against moderate NH perturbations but gradually delocalize and merge with the bulk (skin) states driven by these EPs under periodic (open) boundary conditions. Furthermore, our experiments demonstrate that the dislocation core can feature weak NH skin effects when its direction is perpendicular to the Burgers vector in periodic systems. Our findings, therefore, pave an experimental pathway for probing NH topology via lattice defects and open new avenues for defect-engineered topological devices.