Recent experimental advance in creating dissipative couplings provides a new
route for engineering exotic lattice systems and exploring topological
dissipation. Using the spatial lattice of atomic spinwaves in a vacuum vapor
cell, where purely dissipative couplings arise from diffusion of atoms, we
experimentally realize a dissipative version of the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH)
model. We construct the dissipation spectra of the topological or trivial
lattices via electromagnetically-induced-transparency (EIT) spectroscopy. The
topological dissipation spectrum is found to exhibit edge modes at dissipation
rates within a dissipative gap, decoupled from the bulk. We also validate
chiral symmetry of the dissipative SSH couplings. This work paves the way for
realizing topology-enabled quantum correlations and non-Hermitian topological
quantum optics via dissipative couplings.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure