Slowly decaying zero mode in a weakly non-integrable boundary impurity model

Abstract

The transverse field Ising model (TFIM) on the half-infinite chain possesses an edge zero mode. This work considers an impurity model -- TFIM perturbed by a boundary integrability breaking interaction. For sufficiently large transverse field, but in the ordered phase of the TFIM, the zero mode is observed to decay. The decay is qualitatively different from zero modes where the integrability breaking interactions are non-zero all along the chain. It is shown that for the impurity model, the zero mode decays by relaxing to a non-local quasi-conserved operator, the latter being exactly conserved when the opposite edge of the chain has no non-commuting perturbations so as to ensure perfect degeneracy of the spectrum. In the thermodynamic limit, the quasi-conserved operator vanishes, and a regime is identified where the decay of the zero mode obeys Fermi's Golden Rule. A toy model for the decay is constructed in Krylov space and it is highlighted how Fermi's Golden Rule may be recovered from this toy model.