  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.
