Non-Hermitian Skin Effect in Chiral Materials

The non-Hermitian skin effect (NHSE)—boundary localization of eigenstates induced by dissipation—naturally emerges in chiral chains with spin–orbit coupling and magnetization. When orbital-dependent dissipation is introduced, wavefunctions accumulate at one edge, with the localization direction controlled by the magnetization or chirality. This behavior defines a distinct non-equilibrium phase absent in Hermitian systems. The resulting boundary localization, together with charge trapping, accounts for the non-reciprocal magnetoresistance observed experimentally in chiral molecular junctions. Extending this concept to a generic chiral-chain framework, we show that complex band topology arises from the interplay of chirality and open-system coupling, offering unified insight into spin-selective and magnetochiral transport at chiral molecule–metal interfaces.