Dissipation driven boundary localization in higher order topological insulators

Abstract

We study dissipation driven boundary localization in a Bernevig Hughes Zhang type second order topological insulator by introducing inhomogeneous, spin dependent boundary dissipation. After projection onto the edge subspace, the dominant component of the boundary dissipation lies in the same Pauli channel as the kinetic term. This channel gives both counter-propagating edge modes the same real transfer exponent. The two modes therefore accumulate at the same dissipative domain wall. For the corner states, the dissipative envelope competes with Jackiw Rebbi localization. Increasing dissipation moves their weight from the geometric corners to the dissipative domain wall. Propagating edge states also localize at this wall. Numerical calculations confirm the qualitative predictions of the edge theory. A fixed energy Feshbach reduction captures finite size effects. Inhomogeneous boundary dissipation thus controls boundary state localization without changing the bulk topology.