Engineering the non-Hermitian Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model with skin effects in Rydberg atom arrays

Abstract

We propose and systematically analyze a practical scheme for implementing a one-dimensional non-Hermitian (NH) Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model using individually addressable Rydberg atom arrays. Our setup consists of an atomic chain with three-atom unit cells, in which a synthetic gauge field is generated by applying multicolor laser fields. By engineering fast dissipative channels for one auxiliary atom in each unit cell, adiabatic elimination effectively gives rise to a NH skin effect. We examine how fluctuations in the experimental parameters influence both the skin effect and the topological invariant in real space and find that both features remain highly robust. This work establishes a versatile, controllable, and programmable open-system quantum simulator with neutral atoms, providing a clear route for exploring rich NH topological phenomena.

This version is close to the final published version, with a coefficient error in the derivation corrected and the corresponding figures updated accordingly