Kondo-Zeno crossover in the dynamics of a monitored quantum dot.

Abstract

Continuously monitoring a quantum system can strongly affect its properties and even suppress its coherent evolution via the Quantum Zeno effect. Here we focus on one of the simplest entangled many-body state, arising via the Kondo effect in a strongly interacting quantum dot coupled to a metallic bath, and investigate the effect of continuous monitoring of the dot total charge. We show that the decay rate of an initially polarized spin displays a crossover from Kondo screening to Quantum Zeno effect. Remarkably, the long-lived Kondo state is robust to weak dissipation, as confirmed by the dot spectral function which features a clear Kondo peak at finite dissipation, even in a regime where charge fluctuations and the associated Hubbard bands have been quenched by the monitoring protocol. We derive an effective model for the long-time dynamics which is described, at weak dissipation, by a non-Hermitian Kondo model.