Dissolution of the non-Hermitian skin effect in one-dimensional lattices with linearly varying nonreciprocal hopping

Abstract: We study the one-dimensional non-Hermitian lattices with linearly varying nonreciprocal hopping, where the non-Hermitian skin effect (NHSE) is found to be dissolved gradually as the strength of nonreciprocity increases. The energy spectrum under the open boundary condition is composed of real and imaginary eigenenergies when the nonreciprocal hopping is weak. Interestingly, the real eigenenergies form an equally spaced ladder, and the corresponding eigenstates are localized at the boundary with a Gaussian distribution due to NHSE. By increasing the nonreciprocity, the number of real eigenenergies will decrease while more and more eigenenergies become imaginary. Accompanied by the real-imaginary transition in the spectrum, the eigenstates are shifted from the boundary into the bulk of the lattice. When the nonreciprocity gets strong enough, the whole spectrum will be imaginary and the NHSE disappears completely in the system; i.e., all the eigenstates become Gaussian bound states localized inside the bulk. Our work unveils the exotic properties of non-Hermitian systems with spatially varying nonreciprocal hopping.