Non-Hermitian Kondo effect in ultracold alkaline-earth atoms

Abstract

We investigate the Kondo effect in an open quantum system, motivated by recent experiments with ultracold alkaline-earth(-like) atoms. Because of inelastic collisions and the associated atom losses, this system is described by a complex-valued Kondo interaction and provides a non-Hermitian extension of the Kondo problem. We show that the non-Hermiticity induces anomalous reversion of renormalization-group flows which violate the $g$-theorem due to non-unitarity and produce a quantum phase transition unique to non-Hermiticity. Furthermore, we exactly solve the non-Hermitian Kondo Hamiltonian using a generalized Bethe ansatz method and find the critical line consistent with the renormalization-group flow.