Non-Hermitian Skin Effects in Hermitian Correlated/Disordered Systems: Boundary-Sensitive/Insensitive Quantities and Pseudo Quantum Number

Abstract

There is a common belief in the condensed matter community that bulk quantities become insensitive to the boundary condition in the infinite-volume limit. Here we reconsider this statement in terms of recent arguments of non-Hermitian skin effects, -strong dependence of spectra on boundary conditions for the non-Hermitian Hamiltonians-, in the traditional Green's function formalism. We find the criterion for quantities to be sensitive/insensitive against the boundary condition in Hermitian correlated/disordered systems, which is characterized by the residue theorem. We also discuss the uncertainty of the quasiparticle energy under the skin effects in terms of nonnormal pseudospectra, which can be tested via the sharp optical absorption from the bulk-surface coupling. Our result indicates that "pseudo quantum number" emerges as a consequence of large nonnormality.