  Measurement is one of the most counter-intuitive aspects of quantum physics.
Frequent measurements of a quantum system lead to quantum Zeno dynamics where
time evolution becomes confined to a subspace defined by the projections.
However, weak measurement performed at a finite rate is also capable of locking
the system into such a Zeno subspace in an unconventional way: by Raman-like
transitions via virtual intermediate states outside this subspace, which are
not forbidden. Here, we extend this concept into the realm of non-Hermitian
dynamics by showing that the stochastic competition between measurement and a
system's own dynamics can be described by a non-Hermitian Hamiltonian. We
obtain an analytic solution for ultracold bosons in a lattice and show that a
dark state of the tunnelling operator is a steady state in which the
observable's fluctuations are zero and tunnelling is suppressed by destructive
matter-wave interference. This opens a new venue of investigation beyond the
canonical quantum Zeno dynamics and leads to a new paradigm of competition
between global measurement backaction and short-range atomic dynamics.
