Many-body dynamics of exciton creation in a quantum dot by optical absorption: a quantum quench towards Kondo correlations

We study a quantum quench for a semiconductor quantum dot coupled to a fermionic reservoir, induced by the sudden creation of an exciton via optical absorption. The subsequent emergence of correlations between spin degrees of freedom of dot and reservoir, culminating in the Kondo effect, can be read off from the absorption line shape and understood in terms of the three fixed points of the single-impurity Anderson model. At low temperatures the line shape is dominated by a power-law singularity, with an exponent that depends on gate voltage and, in a universal, asymmetric fashion, on magnetic field, indicative of a tunable Anderson orthogonality catastrophe.