Abstract Non-Hermitian systems host exotic phenomena absent in their Hermitian counterparts, including the recently predicted self-healing effect (SHE) of non-Hermitian skin modes. Here we propose and numerically demonstrate a feasible scheme to realize SHE in photonic Floquet lattices via skin mode tunability (SMT), a mechanism in which the spectrum of skin modes localized at one boundary can be tuned via a potential applied at the opposite boundary. We first develop the SMT mechanism using a tight-binding Floquet Hamiltonian, and then confirm the self-healing dynamics through beam propagation method simulations in an array of coupled helical waveguides with experimentally accessible parameters 1, 2. We show that a targeted skin mode becomes exceptionally sensitive to remote-boundary potentials, allowing broad-range spectral control and the generation of a self-healing state. While full experimental realization remains challenging due to long propagation lengths and loss, our numerical proof of concept together with a discussion of compatible platforms establishes a general framework for engineering skin modes via local perturbations, expanding the toolbox for non-Hermitian wave control.
Bai et al. (Tue,) studied this question.