Dissipative realization of Kondo models

The Kondo effect is a prototypical strongly correlated phenomenon, and it is usually discussed in the context of unitary dynamics. Here, we demonstrate that the Kondo effect can be induced through non-linear dissipative channels, without requiring any coherent interaction on the impurity site. Specifically, we consider a reservoir of noninteracting fermions that can hop on a few impurity sites that are subjected to strong two-body losses. In the simplest case of a single lossy site, we recover the Anderson impurity model in the regime of infinite repulsion, with a small residual dissipation as a perturbation. While the Anderson model gives rise to the Kondo effect, this residual dissipation competes with it, offering an instance of a nonlinear dissipative impurity where the interplay between coherent and incoherent dynamics emerges from the same underlying physical process. We further outline how this dissipative engineering scheme can be extended to two or more lossy sites, realizing generalizations of the Kondo model with spin 1 or higher. Our results suggest alternative implementations of Kondo models using ultracold atoms in transport experiments, where localized dissipation can be naturally introduced, and the Kondo effect observed through conductance measurements.