We propose a measure, which we call the dissipative spectral form factor (DSFF), to characterize the spectral statistics of non-Hermitian (and non-Unitary) matrices. We show that DSFF successfully diagnoses dissipative quantum chaos, and reveals correlations between real and imaginary parts of the complex eigenvalues up to arbitrary energy (and time) scale. Specifically, we provide the exact solution of DSFF for the complex Ginibre ensemble (GinUE) and for a Poissonian random spectrum (Poisson) as minimal models of dissipative quantum chaotic and integrable systems respectively. For dissipative quantum chaotic systems, we show that DSFF exhibits an exact rotational symmetry in its complex time argument $tau$. Analogous to the spectral form factor (SFF) behaviour for Gaussian unitary ensemble, DSFF for GinUE shows a dip-ramp-plateau behavior in $|tau|$: DSFF initially decreases, increases at intermediate time scales, and saturates after a generalized Heisenberg time which scales as the inverse mean level spacing. Remarkably, for large matrix size, the ramp of DSFF for GinUE increases quadratically in $|tau|$, in contrast to the linear ramp in SFF for Hermitian ensembles. For dissipative quantum integrable systems, we show that DSFF takes a constant value except for a region in complex time whose size and behavior depends on the eigenvalue density. Numerically, we verify the above claims and additionally compute DSFF for real and quaternion real Ginibre ensembles. As a physical example, we consider the quantum kicked top model with dissipation, and show that it falls under the universality class of GinUE and Poisson as the `kick is switched on or off. Lastly, we study spectral statistics of ensembles of random classical stochastic matrices or Markov chains, and show that these models fall under the class of Ginibre ensemble.
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