We analyze the quantum trajectory dynamics of free fermions subject to continuous monitoring. For weak monitoring, we identify a novel dynamical regime of subextensive entanglement growth, reminiscent of a critical phase with an emergent conformal invariance. For strong monitoring, however, the dynamics favors a transition into a quantum Zeno-like area-law regime. Close to the critical point, we observe logarithmic finite size corrections, indicating a Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless mechanism underlying the transition. This uncovers an unconventional entanglement transition in an elementary, physically realistic model for weak continuous measurements. In addition, we demonstrate that the measurement aspect in the dynamics is crucial for whether or not a phase transition takes place.
We analyze the quantum trajectory dynamics of free fermions subject to continuous monitoring. For weak monitoring, we identify a novel dynamical regime of subextensive entanglement growth, reminiscent of a critical phase with an emergent conformal invariance. For strong monitoring, however, the dynamics favors a transition into a quantum Zeno-like area-law regime. Close to the critical point, we observe logarithmic finite size corrections, indicating a Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless mechanism underlying the transition. This uncovers an unconventional entanglement transition in an elementary, physically realistic model for weak continuous measurements. In addition, we demonstrate that the measurement aspect in the dynamics is crucial for whether or not a phase transition takes place.
Continuous monitoring of one-dimensional free fermionic systems can generate phenomena reminiscent of quantum criticality, such as logarithmic entanglement growth, algebraic correlations, and emergent conformal invariance, but in a nonequilibrium setting. However, whether these signatures reflect a genuine phase of nonequilibrium quantum matter or persist only over finite length scales is an active area of research. We address this question in a free fermionic chain subject to continuous monitoring of lattice-site occupations. An unraveling phase φ interpolates between measurement schemes, corresponding to different stochastic unravelings of the same Lindblad master equation; for φ = 0 , measurements disentangle lattice sites, while for φ = π / 2 they act as unitary random noise, yielding volume-law steady-state entanglement. Using replica Keldysh field theory, we obtain a nonlinear sigma model describing the long-wavelength physics. This analysis shows that for 0 ≤ φ < π / 2 , entanglement ultimately obeys an area law, but only beyond the exponentially large scale ln ( l φ , * ) ∼ J / [ γ cos ( φ ) ] , where J is the hopping amplitude and γ the measurement rate. Resolving l φ , * in numerical simulations is difficult for γ / J → 0 or φ → π / 2 . However, the theory also predicts that critical-like behavior appears below a crossover scale that grows only algebraically in J / γ , making it numerically accessible. Our simulations confirm these predictions, establishing the absence of measurement- or unraveling-induced entanglement transitions in this model.
The authors investigate here the dynamics of free fermions in a random potential system under continuous monitoring. Repeated measurements are known to induce an entanglement phase transition from a logarithmically entangled critical state to area law, while disorder leads to Anderson localization. They show that their interplay results in a stable critical phase at finite disorder strength and dissipation, which drive a transition consistent with Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless universality. This work is important for testing such phase transitions in quantum dot arrays and nanowires.
We numerically investigate measurement-induced phase transitions in monitored free fermions through the spectral and eigenstate properties of the entanglement Hamiltonian. By analyzing entanglement scaling, we identify three nontrivial fixed points, for which the entanglement follows exact analytical scaling forms: chaotic unitary dynamics at infinitesimal monitoring, characterized by a Gaussian Page law; a Fermi-liquid fixed point at moderate monitoring, defining a metallic phase with logarithmic entanglement growth and emergent space-time invariance; and a quantum Lifshitz fixed point marking the measurement-induced phase transition into a localized area-law phase. Adopting a random-matrix perspective on the entanglement Hamiltonian, we show that short-range spectral correlations, such as the adjacent gap ratio $\ensuremath{\langle}\stackrel{\ifmmode \tilde{}\else \~{}\fi{}}{r}\ensuremath{\rangle}$ and the Kullback-Leibler divergence KL1, sharply detect an ergodic to nonergodic phase transition at the quantum Lifshitz fixed point, and yield precise estimates of the critical point and correlation length exponent. Long-range probes, including the spectral form factor and the associated Thouless time, corroborate this picture, while the variant KL2 uncovers signatures of a possible nonergodic extended (multifractal) regime at intermediate monitoring strengths. Together, these results establish the entanglement Hamiltonian as a powerful framework for diagnosing metallic, localized, and multifractal regimes in monitored quantum dynamics, and highlight unexpected scaling structures, Fermi liquid, and Lifshitz criticality, that lie beyond current field-theoretic approaches.
We numerically investigate measurement-induced phase transitions in monitored free fermions through the spectral and eigenstate properties of the entanglement Hamiltonian. By analyzing entanglement scaling, we identify three non-trivial fixed points, for which the entanglement follows exact analytical scaling forms: chaotic unitary dynamics at infinitesimal monitoring, characterized by a Gaussian Page law; a Fermi-liquid fixed point at moderate monitoring, defining a metallic phase with logarithmic entanglement growth and emergent space-time invariance; and a quantum Lifshitz fixed point marking the measurement-induced phase transition into a localized area-law phase. Adopting a random-matrix perspective on the entanglement Hamiltonian, we show that short-range spectral correlations, such as the adjacent gap ratio ⟨r~⟩ and the Kullback-Leibler divergence KL1, sharply detect an ergodic to non-ergodic phase transition at the quantum Lifshitz fixed point, and yield precise estimates of the critical point and correlation length exponent. Long-range probes, including the spectral form factor and the associated Thouless time, corroborate this picture, while the variant KL2 uncovers signatures of a possible non-ergodic extended (multifractal) regime at intermediate monitoring strengths. Together, these results establish the entanglement Hamiltonian as a powerful framework for diagnosing metallic, localized, and multifractal regimes in monitored quantum dynamics, and highlight unexpected scaling structures, Fermi-liquid and Lifshitz criticality, that lie beyond current field-theoretic approaches.
We study a one-dimensional lattice system of free fermions subjected to a generalized measurement process: the system exchanges particles with its environment, but each fermion leaving or entering the system is counted. In contrast to the freezing of dynamics due to frequent measurements of lattice site occupation numbers, a high rate of fermion counts induces fast fluctuations in the state of the system. Still, through numerical simulations of quantum trajectories and an analytical approach based on replica Keldysh field theory, we find that instantaneous correlations and entanglement properties of free fermions subjected to fermion counting and local occupation measurements are strikingly similar. We explain this similarity through a generalized Zeno effect induced by fermion counting and a universal long-wavelength description in terms of a nonlinear sigma model. The physical requirements underlying this universal emergent behavior are conservation of the total number of particles in the system and its environment, and conservation of the purity of the state of the system by keeping a full record of all measurement outcomes. For both types of measurement processes, we present strong evidence against the existence of a critical phase with logarithmic entanglement and conformal invariance. Instead, we identify a finite critical range of length scales on which signatures of conformal invariance are observable. While area-law entanglement is established beyond a scale that is exponentially large in the measurement rate, the upper boundary of the critical range is only algebraically large and thus numerically accessible. Our finding that these properties do not rely on particle-number conservation has far-reaching implications for measurement-induced phenomena beyond noninteracting fermions, such as charge sharpening in random quantum circuits or generic interacting systems.
We study the entanglement dynamics of a one-dimensional chain of monitored non-interacting complex fermions with random power-law hopping characterized by a decay exponent α. For α≲1, in stark contrast with the case of hopping to nearest neighbors, the scaling of the entanglement entropy (EE) of the steady state with system size L is faster than logarithmic for any monitoring or disorder strength and it tends towards a linear (volume-law) scaling for sufficiently small α≲1/2. For α>3/2, the EE is in the area-law phase, namely, no scaling with L, for any monitoring strength. For 1<α≲3/2, we identify an α-dependent measurement-induced phase transition (MIPT) at a critical value of the monitoring strength separating the mentioned area-law and sub-volume-law phases. At this critical point, the EE scales logarithmically with system size, and the density-density correlation function, closely related to the EE, exhibits multifractal features. These results highlight the importance of superdiffusive classical hopping in the entanglement dynamic of quantum many-body systems and also help differentiate its role with respect to conventional sources of entanglement such as genuine quantum non-locality.