Non-Hermitian skin effect in a single trapped ion

The non-Hermitian skin effect (NHSE) describes the exponential localization of all eigenstates toward boundaries in non-Hermitian systems, and has attracted intense research interest of late. Here we theoretically propose a scheme in which the NHSE significantly impacts the external motion of a single trapped ion through complex spin-motion dynamics. On the one hand, we show the competition between the NHSE and the coherent Bloch dynamics. On the other hand, since the NHSE manifests as a nonreciprocal flow in occupied phonon modes, we demonstrate that such dynamics can have potential applications in cooling and sensing. Our proposal can be readily implemented using existing experimental techniques and offers a scalable (in terms of the available ions and phonon modes) simulation platform for relevant non-Hermitian physics.