Time evolution of quantum many-body systems typically leads to a state with maximal entanglement allowed by symmetries.Two distinct routes to impede entanglement growth are inducing localization via spatial disorder, or subjecting the system to nonunitary evolution, e.g., via projective measurements.Here we employ the idea of spacetime rotation of a circuit to explore the relation between systems that fall into these two classes.In particular, by spacetime rotating unitary Floquet circuits that display a localization transition, we construct nonunitary circuits that display a rich variety of entanglement scaling and phase transitions.One outcome of our approach is a nonunitary circuit for free fermions in one dimension that exhibits an entanglement transition from logarithmic scaling to volume-law scaling.This transition is accompanied by a "purification transition" analogous to that seen in hybrid projective-unitary circuits.We follow a similar strategy to construct a nonunitary two-dimensional (2D) Clifford circuit that shows a transition from area to volume-law entanglement scaling.Similarly, we spacetime rotate a 1D spin chain that hosts many-body localization to obtain a nonunitary circuit that exhibits an entanglement transition.Finally, we introduce an unconventional correlator and argue that if a unitary circuit hosts a many-body localization transition then the correlator is expected to be singular in its nonunitary counterpart as well.
Time evolution of quantum many-body systems typically leads to a state with maximal entanglement allowed by symmetries.Two distinct routes to impede entanglement growth are inducing localization via spatial disorder, or subjecting the system to nonunitary evolution, e.g., via projective measurements.Here we employ the idea of spacetime rotation of a circuit to explore the relation between systems that fall into these two classes.In particular, by spacetime rotating unitary Floquet circuits that display a localization transition, we construct nonunitary circuits that display a rich variety of entanglement scaling and phase transitions.One outcome of our approach is a nonunitary circuit for free fermions in one dimension that exhibits an entanglement transition from logarithmic scaling to volume-law scaling.This transition is accompanied by a "purification transition" analogous to that seen in hybrid projective-unitary circuits.We follow a similar strategy to construct a nonunitary two-dimensional (2D) Clifford circuit that shows a transition from area to volume-law entanglement scaling.Similarly, we spacetime rotate a 1D spin chain that hosts many-body localization to obtain a nonunitary circuit that exhibits an entanglement transition.Finally, we introduce an unconventional correlator and argue that if a unitary circuit hosts a many-body localization transition then the correlator is expected to be singular in its nonunitary counterpart as well.
Time evolution of quantum many-body systems typically leads to a state with maximal entanglement allowed by symmetries. Two distinct routes to impede entanglement growth are inducing localization via spatial disorder, or subjecting the system to non-unitary evolution, e.g., via projective measurements. Here we employ the idea of space-time rotation of a circuit to explore the relation between systems that fall into these two classes. In particular, by space-time rotating unitary Floquet circuits that display a localization transition, we construct non-unitary circuits that display a rich variety of entanglement scaling and phase transitions. One outcome of our approach is a non-unitary circuit for free fermions in 1d that exhibits an entanglement transition from logarithmic scaling to volume-law scaling. This transition is accompanied by a 'purification transition' analogous to that seen in hybrid projective-unitary circuits. We follow a similar strategy to construct a non-unitary 2d Clifford circuit that shows a transition from area to volume-law entanglement scaling. Similarly, we space-time rotate a 1d spin chain that hosts many-body localization to obtain a non-unitary circuit that exhibits an entanglement transition. Finally, we introduce an unconventional correlator and argue that if a unitary circuit hosts a many-body localization transition, then the correlator is expected to be singular in its non-unitary counterpart as well.
An entanglement transition can occur without a corresponding transition in purification. We demonstrate this separation in spatially local monitored Clifford circuits with a fixed number of layers per Floquet period, where a spatially random pattern of Clifford gates and Pauli measurements is repeated exactly in time. Rare spatial structures persist under this repetition and break the correspondence between entanglement and purification found in conventional spacetime-random circuits. In one spatial dimension, the late-time entanglement produced with an initial product state remains area-law, while the system remains extensively mixed in the thermodynamic and long-time limits if the initial state is maximally mixed. In two or more dimensions, we find a transition between volume-law and area-law entanglement while the system remains mixed on both sides of this transition. An extensive amount of quantum information survives indefinitely in both phases and evolves unitarily despite the repeated measurements. We introduce the logical-support radius to characterize its spatial spreading and identify the volume-law and area-law phases with delocalized and localized logical dynamics, respectively. We further introduce the logical Krylov dimension, which counts the independent logical operators dynamically generated from an initially local operator. Its scaling resolves the transition and provides evidence for a new universality class of measurement-induced phase transitions.
The extension of many-body quantum dynamics to the nonunitary domain has led to a series of exciting developments, including new out-of-equilibrium entanglement phases and phase transitions.We show how a duality transformation between space and time, on one hand, and unitarity and nonunitarity, on the other, can be used to realize steady-state phases of nonunitary dynamics that exhibit a rich variety of behavior in their entanglement scaling with subsystem size-from logarithmic to extensive to fractal.We show how these outcomes in nonunitary circuits (that are "spacetime dual" to unitary circuits) relate to the growth of entanglement in time in the corresponding unitary circuits, and how they differ, through an exact mapping to a problem of unitary evolution with boundary decoherence, in which information gets "radiated away" from one edge of the system.In spacetime duals of chaotic unitary circuits, this mapping allows us to analytically derive a nonthermal volume-law entangled phase with a universal logarithmic correction to the entropy, previously observed in unitary-measurement dynamics.Notably, we also find robust steady-state phases with fractal entanglement scaling, SðlÞ ∼ l α with tunable 0 < α < 1 for subsystems of size l in one dimension.We present an experimental protocol for preparing these novel steady states with only a vanishing density of postselected measurements via a type of "teleportation" between spacelike and timelike slices of quantum circuits.
The interplay of unitary evolution and projective measurements is a modern interest in the study of many-body entanglement. On the one hand, the competition between these two processes leads to the recently discovered measurement-induced phase transition (MIPT). On the other hand, measurement-based quantum computation (MBQC) is a well-known computational paradigm where measurements simulate unitary evolution by utilizing the entanglement of special resources such as the two-dimensional (2D) cluster state. The entanglement properties enabling MBQC may be attributed to symmetry-protected topological (SPT) orders, particularly subsystem-symmetry-protected topological (SSPT) orders. It was recently found that the one-dimensional cluster state may be associated with an SPT phase in random circuits respecting a global ${\mathbb{Z}}_{2}\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{\mathbb{Z}}_{2}$ symmetry, and furthermore that all phase transitions in this scenario belong to the same universality class. As resources with greater computational power feature greater symmetry, it is fruitful to investigate further any relationship between levels of symmetry in MIPTs and MBQC. In this paper we investigate MIPTs on a torus with three levels of symmetry-respecting unitary evolution interspersed by measurements. Although we find two area-law phases and one volume-law phase with distinct entanglement structures for each ensemble, the phase transition from the volume-law phase to the area-law phase associated with the 2D SSPT cluster state has variable correlation length exponent $\ensuremath{\nu}$. Whereas $\ensuremath{\nu}\ensuremath{\approx}0.90$ for unconstrained Clifford unitaries and $\ensuremath{\nu}\ensuremath{\approx}0.83$ for globally symmetric Cliffords, subsystem-symmetric Cliffords feature a much smaller value $\ensuremath{\nu}\ensuremath{\approx}0.38$. We discuss how these distinct $\ensuremath{\nu}$'s quantify spacetime response scales where quantum information is manipulated by single-qubit measurements as in MBQC.
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.
Starting from a state of low quantum entanglement, local unitary time evolution increases the entanglement of a quantum many-body system. In contrast, local projective measurements disentangle degrees of freedom and decrease entanglement. We study the interplay of these competing tendencies by considering time evolution combining both unitary and projective dynamics. We begin by constructing a toy model of Bell pair dynamics which demonstrates that measurements can keep a system in a state of low, i.e., area-law, entanglement, in contrast with the volume-law entanglement produced by generic pure unitary time evolution. While the simplest Bell pair model has area-law entanglement for any measurement rate, as seen in certain noninteracting systems, we show that more generic models of entanglement can feature an area-to-volume law transition at a critical value of the measurement rate, in agreement with recent numerical investigations. As a concrete example of these ideas, we analytically investigate Clifford evolution in qubit systems which can exhibit an entanglement transition. We are able to identify stabilizer size distributions characterizing the area law, volume law, and critical ``fixed points.'' We also discuss a Floquet random unitary circuit, where the answers depend on the order of limits---one order of limits yields area-law entanglement for any nonzero measurement rate, whereas a different order of limits allows for an arealaw--volumelaw transition. Finally, we provide a rigorous argument that a system subjected to projective measurements can only exhibit a volume-law entanglement entropy if it also features a subleading correction term, which provides a universal signature of projective dynamics in the high-entanglement phase.