Correlation versus dissipation in a non-Hermitian Anderson impurity model

Abstract

We analyze the competition between strong correlations and dissipation in quantum impurity systems from the Kondo regime to the valence fluctuation regime by developing a slave-boson theory for a non-Hermitian Anderson impurity model with one-body loss. Notably, in the non-Hermitian Kondo regime, strong correlations qualitatively change the nature of dissipation through renormalization effects, where the effective one-body loss is suppressed and emergent many-body dissipation characterized by the complex-valued hybridization is generated. We unveil the mechanism of a dissipative quantum phase transition of the Kondo state on the basis of this renormalization effect, which counterintuitively enhances the lifetime of the impurity against loss. We also find a crossover from the non-Hermitian Kondo regime to the valence fluctuation regime dominated by one-body dissipation. Our results can be tested in a wide variety of setups such as quantum dots coupled to electronic leads and quantum point contacts in ultracold Fermi gases.