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  • Letter
  • Open Access

Anomalous wave-packet dynamics in one-dimensional non-Hermitian lattices

Yanyan He* and Tomoki Ozawa†

  • Advanced Institute for Materials Research (WPI-AIMR), Tohoku University, Sendai 980-8577, Japan

  • *Contact author: he.yanyan.c6@tohoku.ac.jp
  • †Contact author: tomoki.ozawa.d8@tohoku.ac.jp
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Phys. Rev. Research 8, L032044 – Published 14 September, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/t7qp-wr19

Abstract

Non-Hermitian (NH) systems have attracted great attention due to their exotic phenomena beyond Hermitian domains. Here, we systematically study the wave-packet dynamics in general one-dimensional NH lattices and uncover several unexpected phenomena. The group velocity of a wavepacket during the time evolution in such NH lattices is governed not only by the real part of the band structure but also by its imaginary part. The momentum also evolves due to the imaginary part of the band structure, which can lead to a self-induced Bloch oscillation in the absence of external fields. Furthermore, we discover that the wave-packet dynamics can exhibit disorder-free NH jumps even when the energy spectra are entirely real, which we call the NH wave-packet jump. Finally, we show that the NH wave-packet jumps can lead to both positive and negative temporal Goos-Hänchen shifts at the edge.

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Phys. Rev. Research 8, L032044– Published 14 September, 2026
  • Received 8 December 2025
  • Revised 7 April 2026
  • Accepted 26 August 2026
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