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Updated: Dec 6, 2025

Fabrication and Characterization of a Conformal Skin-like Electronic System for Quantitative, Cutaneous Wound Management
Published on: September 2, 2015
Correspondence between Winding Numbers and Skin Modes in Non-Hermitian Systems
Kai Zhang1,2, Zhesen Yang1,2, Chen Fang1,3,4
1Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics, and Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China.
Abstract:
We establish exact relations between the winding of "energy" (eigenvalue of Hamiltonian) on the complex plane as momentum traverses the Brillouin zone with periodic boundary condition, and the presence of "skin modes" with open boundary conditions in non-Hermitian systems. We show that the nonzero winding with respect to any complex reference energy leads to the presence of skin modes, and vice versa. We also show that both the nonzero winding and the presence of skin modes share the common physical origin that is the nonvanishing current through the system.
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