Steering non-Hermitian skin states by engineering interface in 1D nonreciprocal acoustic crystal

Topological insulators possess strong topological protection properties and can manipulate the wave propagation to combat disorder and defects. And now they have grown into a large research field in photonic and phononic crystals. However, the conventional topological band theory is used to describe a closed photonic/phononic crystal that is assumed to be a Hermitian system. In fact, actual physical systems often couple with external environment, and generate non-Hermitian Hamiltonians with complex eigenvalues. Recently, many novel topological properties have been induced by the interaction between non-Hermitian phase and topological phase. A prominent example is non-Hermitian skin effect that all eigenstates are localized to the boundary in open system, which is different from the conventional topological edge state. This unique physical phenomenon has inspired various applications, such as wave funneling, enhanced sensing, and topological lasing. In this work, we describe the non-Hermitian skin effect by using winding number domains. The sign of the winding number domain determines the rotation direction of the loops in the complex frequency plane, whose sign can be controlled by the nonreciprocal coupling direction. In this work, we design different topological skin interfaces between different domains with opposite winding numbers to manipulate the energy focusing on middle or two-end of non-Hermitian one-dimensional acoustic cavity chain. In experiment, we use an electroacoustic coupling method, in which a unidirectional coupler composed of microphones, speakers, phase shifters, and amplifiers is used to introduce positive and negative non-reciprocal couplings between the two acoustic cavities, and study the characteristics of these non-reciprocal couplings. Then, the non-reciprocal coupling cavities are extended into a chain structure, and the magnitudes and signs of the non-reciprocal couplings are flexibly controlled by using phase shifters and amplifiers. Through this method, we successfully construct the interfaces between different winding number domains, achieving a one-dimensional non-Hermitian skin effect at various interfaces. The experimental results indicate that the sound can be focused on the middle interface or two-end interfaces for different nonreciprocal coupling distributions, and the skin interface can also be switched from middle to two-end by exchanging the nonreciprocal coupling direction of the domains. Our research results provide greater flexibility for designing acoustic devices and also a new platform for exploring advanced topological acoustic systems for controlling sound propagation.