We investigate the dynamics of two-dimensional quantum spin systems under the combined effect of random unitary gates and local projective measurements. When considering steady states, a measurement-induced transition occurs between two distinct dynamical phases, one characterized by a volume-law scaling of entanglement entropy, the other by an area law. Employing stabilizer states and Clifford random unitary gates, we numerically investigate square lattices of linear dimension up to $L=48$ for two distinct measurement protocols. For both protocols, we observe a transition point where the dominant contribution in the entanglement entropy displays multiplicative logarithmic violations to the area law. We obtain estimates of the correlation length critical exponent at the percent level; these estimates suggest universal behavior and are incompatible with the universality class of 3D percolation.
We investigate the dynamics of two-dimensional quantum spin systems under the combined effect of random unitary gates and local projective measurements. When considering steady states, a measurement-induced transition occurs between two distinct dynamical phases, one characterized by a volume-law scaling of entanglement entropy, the other by an area law. Employing stabilizer states and Clifford random unitary gates, we numerically investigate square lattices of linear dimension up to L=48 for two distinct measurement protocols. For both protocols, we observe a transition point where the dominant contribution in the entanglement entropy displays multiplicative logarithmic violations to the area law. We obtain estimates of the correlation length critical exponent at the percent level; these estimates suggest universal behavior and are incompatible with the universality class of 3D percolation.
Entanglement transitions in quantum dynamics present a novel class of phase transitions in non-equilibrium systems. When a many-body quantum system undergoes hybrid quantum dynamics, consisting of unitary evolution interspersed with monitored random measurements, the steady-state can exhibit a phase transition between volume- and area-law entanglement. The role of dimension in the nature of these transitions is an open problem. There is a dimensional correspondence between measurement-induced transitions in non-unitary quantum circuits in d spatial dimensions and classical statistical mechanical models in d+1 dimensions, where the time dimension in the quantum problem is mapped to a spatial dimension in the classical model. In this work we show that the role of dimension is considerably richer by unveiling a form of `dimensional hybridity': critical properties of the steady-state entanglement are governed by a combination of exponents consistent with d-dimensional percolation and (d+1)-dimensional percolation. We uncover this dimensional hybridity in 1+1D and 2+1D circuits using a graph-state based simulation algorithm where the entanglement structure is encoded in an underlying graph, providing access to the geometric structure of entanglement. We locate the critical point using the tripartite information, revealing area-law entanglement scaling at criticality, and showing that the entanglement transition coincides with the purification transition. The emergence of this `dimensional hybridity' in these non-unitary quantum circuits sheds new light on the universality of measurement-induced transitions, and opens the way for analyzing the quantum error correcting properties of random unitary circuits in higher dimensions.
When subject to a nonlocal unitary evolution, qubits in a quantum circuit become increasingly entangled. Conversely, measurements applied to individual qubits lead to their disentanglement from the collective system. The extent of entanglement reduction depends on the frequency of local projective measurements. A delicate balance emerges between unitary evolution, which enhances entanglement, and measurements which diminish it. In the thermodynamic limit, there is a phase transition from volume law entanglement to area law entanglement at a critical value of measurement frequency. This phenomenon, occurring in hybrid quantum circuits with both unitary gates and measurements, is termed as measurement-induced phase transition (MIPT). We study the behavior of MIPT in circuits comprising of two-qubit unitary gates parameterized by Cartan decomposition. We show that the entangling power and gate typicality of the two-qubit local unitaries employed in the circuit can be used to explain the behavior of global bipartite entanglement the circuit can sustain. When the two-qubit gate throughout the circuit is the identity and measurements are the sole driver of the entanglement behavior, we obtain an analytical estimate for the entanglement entropy that shows remarkable agreement with numerical simulations. We also find that the entangling power and gate typicality enable the classification of the two-qubit unitaries by different universality classes of phase transitions that can occur in the hybrid circuit. For all unitaries in a particular universality class, the transition from volume to area law of entanglement occurs with the same exponent that characterizes the phase transition.
We explore the dynamical phases of unitary Clifford circuits with variable-range interactions, coupled to a monitoring environment. We investigate two classes of models, distinguished by the action of the unitary gates, which either are organized in clusters of finite-range two-body gates, or are pair-wise interactions randomly distributed throughout the system with a power-law distribution. We find the range of the interactions plays a key role in characterizing both phases and their measurement-induced transitions. For the cluster unitary gates we find a transition between a phase with volume-law scaling of the entanglement entropy and a phase with area-law entanglement entropy. Our results indicate that the universality class of the phase transition is compatible to that of short range hybrid Clifford circuits. Oppositely, in the case of power-law distributed gates, we find the universality class of the phase transition changes continuously with the parameter controlling the range of interactions. In particular, for intermediate values of the control parameter, we find a non-conformal critical line which separates a phase with volume-law scaling of the entanglement entropy from one with sub-extensive scaling. Within this region, we find the entanglement entropy and the logarithmic negativity present a cross-over from a phase with algebraic growth of entanglement with system size, and an area-law phase.
Random quantum circuits provide a framework for probing universal dynamical phenomena in chaotic quantum many-body systems, by circumventing the microscopic details of Hamiltonian evolution. Bipartite entanglement measures can be used to characterize the dynamical phases that emerge in these systems. Typically, under random unitary evolution, bipartite entanglement entropies exhibit a linear growth, and attain steady-state values that scale extensively with the system volume. However, when local projective measurements are introduced, a suppression of steady-state bipartite entropies occurs, leading to a sub-extensive scaling with the system volume. This class of entanglement scaling transitions, from an extensive to a sub-extensive scaling regime, has sparked interest in a broader class of measurement-induced phase transitions, with a potential to further our understanding of fault-tolerance in quantum computing, and in realizing synthetic quantum phases on digital quantum simulators. In this work, we characterize entanglement scaling transitions in one-dimensional random quantum circuits composed of q-level systems, with the local Hilbert space dimension q ≥ 2. This predominantly numerical study employs generalizations of the stabilizer formalism and the Clifford group to higher-dimensional Hilbert spaces to simulate the measurement-induced transitions. We find that the nature of the entanglement scaling transition remains invariant under changes in the local Hilbert space dimension. However, the critical measurement rate inducing the transition increases with q, asymptotically approaching 1/2 in the limit q → ∞. To further explore this classical limit, we develop a minimal dynamical model that captures entanglement structures under unitary evolution. We analyze the entanglement structures in thermal stabilizer states using this model, and propose an approach for incorporating measurements within this framework.
It has recently been discovered that random quantum circuits provide an avenue to realize rich entanglement phase diagrams, which are hidden to standard expectation values of operators. Here we study (2+1)D random circuits with random Clifford unitary gates and measurements designed to stabilize trivial area law and topologically ordered phases. With competing single qubit Pauli-Z and toric code stabilizer measurements, in addition to random Clifford unitaries, we find a phase diagram involving a tricritical point that maps to (2+1)D percolation, a possibly stable critical phase, topologically ordered, trivial, and volume law phases, and lines of critical points separating them. With Pauli-Y single qubit measurements instead, we find an anisotropic self-dual tricritical point, with dynamical exponent z≈1.46, exhibiting logarithmic violation of the area law and an anomalous exponent for the topological entanglement entropy, which thus appears distinct from any known percolation fixed point. The phase diagram also hosts a measurement-induced volume law entangled phase in the absence of unitary dynamics.
Monitored random circuits, consisting of alternating layers of entangling two-qubit gates and projective single-qubit measurements applied to some fraction p of the qubits, have been a topic of recent interest. In particular, the resulting steady state exhibits a phase transition from highly correlated states with "volume-law" entanglement at p<p_{c} to localized states with "area-law" entanglement at p>p_{c}. It is hard to access this transition experimentally, as it cannot be seen at the ensemble level. Naively, to observe it one must repeat the experiment until the set of measurement results repeats itself, with likelihood that is exponentially small in the number of measurements. To overcome this issue, we present a hybrid quantum-classical algorithm which creates a matrix product state (MPS) based "unitary mirror" of the projected circuit. Polynomial-sized tensor networks can represent quantum states with area-law entanglement, and so the unitary mirror can well approximate the experimental state above p_{c} but fails exponentially below it. The breaking of this mirror can thus pinpoint the critical point. We outline the algorithm and how such results would be obtained. We present a bound on the maximum entanglement entropy of any given state that is well represented by an MPS, and from the bound suggest how the volume-law phase can be bounded. We consider whether the entanglement could similarly be bounded from below where the MPS fails. Finally, we present numerical results for small qubit numbers and for monitored circuits with random Clifford gates.