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arXiv:2307.13038 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Charge and entanglement criticality in a U(1)-symmetric hybrid circuit of qubits

Ahana Chakraborty, Kun Chen, Aidan Zabalo, Justin H. Wilson, J. H. Pixley

Published Jul 18, 2024• 13 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We study critical properties of the entanglement and charge-sharpening measurement-induced phase transitions in a nonunitary quantum circuit evolving with a U(1) conserved charge. Our numerical estimation of the critical properties of the entanglement transition at finite system sizes appears distinct from the generic nonconserving case and percolation. We provide two possible interpretations of this observation: (a) these two transitions occur at different measurement rates in the thermodynamic limit, but at finite system sizes their critical fans overlap and the critical exponents we probed here show a combination of both criticalities. Nonetheless, the multifractal properties of the entanglement transition remain distinct from the generic case without any symmetry, indicating a unique universality class due to the U(1) symmetry. (b) These two transitions occur at the same measurement rate at any lengthscale. Within this interpretation, our estimation of all the critical exponents is sharply different from the nonconserving case, again confirming the presence of a new universality class due to U(1) symmetry. We compute entanglement critical exponents and correlation functions via various ancilla measures, we use a transfer matrix for multifractality, and we compute correlators associated with charge sharpening to explain these findings. Through these correlators, we also find evidence consistent with the charge-sharpening transition being of the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless type (including the predicted ``jump'' in stiffness), which simultaneously argues for a broad critical fan for this transition. As a result, attempts to measure critical properties in this finite-size system will see anomalously large exponents predicted by our numerical analysis.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.110.045135

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We study critical properties of the entanglement and charge-sharpening measurement-induced phase transitions in a nonunitary quantum circuit evolving with a U(1) conserved charge. Our numerical estimation of the critical properties of the entanglement transition at finite system sizes appears distinct from the generic nonconserving case and percolation. We provide two possible interpretations of this observation: (a) these two transitions occur at different measurement rates in the thermodynamic limit, but at finite system sizes their critical fans overlap and the critical exponents we probed here show a combination of both criticalities. Nonetheless, the multifractal properties of the entanglement transition remain distinct from the generic case without any symmetry, indicating a unique universality class due to the U(1) symmetry. (b) These two transitions occur at the same measurement rate at any lengthscale. Within this interpretation, our estimation of all the critical exponents is sharply different from the nonconserving case, again confirming the presence of a new universality class due to U(1) symmetry. We compute entanglement critical exponents and correlation functions via various ancilla measures, we use a transfer matrix for multifractality, and we compute correlators associated with charge sharpening to explain these findings. Through these correlators, we also find evidence consistent with the charge-sharpening transition being of the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless type (including the predicted ``jump'' in stiffness), which simultaneously argues for a broad critical fan for this transition. As a result, attempts to measure critical properties in this finite-size system will see anomalously large exponents predicted by our numerical analysis.
We study the critical properties of random quantum circuits with a U(1)U(1)U(1) symmetry subject to local projective measurements that explicitly break this symmetry. We find that, at the measurement-induced phase transition, symmetry-breaking measurements act as a relevant perturbation at large scales, leading to the same universal critical properties as the corresponding monitored random circuit with non-symmetric unitary dynamics. In particular, we consider monitored U(1)U(1)U(1)-symmetric Haar-random circuits in the limit of large local Hilbert-space dimension, where the trajectory-averaged entanglement entropy can be exactly obtained in terms of a classical statistical mechanics model. In this model, the charge associated with the conservation law follows a symmetric simple exclusion process, in which symmetry-breaking measurements correspond to disordered defects that create and destroy charges. We prove that the charge correlation length remains finite for any measurement rate, ruling out a charge-sharpening transition, in contrast to the case of symmetry-preserving measurements. We further support our predictions at finite local Hilbert-space dimension through numerical finite-size scaling analyses of the entanglement transition in monitored U(1)U(1)U(1)-symmetric Haar and stabilizer random circuits.
We study the critical properties of random quantum circuits with a U(1)U(1)U(1) symmetry subject to local projective measurements that explicitly break this symmetry. We find that, at the measurement-induced phase transition, symmetry-breaking measurements act as a relevant perturbation at large scales, leading to the same universal critical properties as the corresponding monitored random circuit with non-symmetric unitary dynamics. In particular, we consider monitored U(1)U(1)U(1)-symmetric Haar-random circuits in the limit of large local Hilbert-space dimension, where the trajectory-averaged entanglement entropy can be exactly obtained in terms of a classical statistical mechanics model. In this model, the charge associated with the conservation law follows a symmetric simple exclusion process, in which symmetry-breaking measurements correspond to disordered defects that create and destroy charges. We prove that the charge correlation length remains finite for any measurement rate, ruling out a charge-sharpening transition, in contrast to the case of symmetry-preserving measurements. We further support our predictions at finite local Hilbert-space dimension through numerical finite-size scaling analyses of the entanglement transition in monitored U(1)U(1)U(1)-symmetric Haar and stabilizer random circuits.
Monitored quantum circuits can exhibit an entanglement transition as a function of the rate of measurements, stemming from the competition between scrambling unitary dynamics and disentangling projective measurements.We study how entanglement dynamics in nonunitary quantum circuits can be enriched in the presence of charge conservation, using a combination of exact numerics and a mapping onto a statistical mechanics model of constrained hard-core random walkers.We uncover a charge-sharpening transition that separates different scrambling phases with volume-law scaling of entanglement, distinguished by whether measurements can efficiently reveal the total charge of the system.We find that while Rényi entropies grow sub-ballistically as ffiffi t p in the absence of measurement, for even an infinitesimal rate of measurements, all average Rényi entropies grow ballistically with time ∼t.We study numerically the critical behavior of the charge-sharpening and entanglement transitions in U(1) circuits, and show that they exhibit emergent Lorentz invariance and can also be diagnosed using scalable local ancilla probes.Our statistical mechanical mapping technique readily generalizes to arbitrary Abelian groups, and offers a general framework for studying dissipatively stabilized symmetry-breaking and topological orders.
Monitored quantum circuits (MRCs) exhibit a measurement-induced phase transition between area-law and volume-law entanglement scaling. MRCs with a conserved charge additionally exhibit two distinct volume-law entangled phases that cannot be characterized by equilibrium notions of symmetry-breaking or topological order, but rather by the nonequilibrium dynamics and steady-state distribution of charge fluctuations. These include a charge-fuzzy phase in which charge information is rapidly scrambled leading to slowly decaying spatial fluctuations of charge in the steady state, and a charge-sharp phase in which measurements collapse quantum fluctuations of charge without destroying the volume-law entanglement of neutral degrees of freedom. By taking a continuous-time, weak-measurement limit, we construct a controlled replica field theory description of these phases and their intervening charge-sharpening transition in one spatial dimension. We find that the charge fuzzy phase is a critical phase with continuously evolving critical exponents that terminates in a modified Kosterlitz-Thouless transition to the short-range correlated charge-sharp phase. We numerically corroborate these scaling predictions also hold for discrete-time projective-measurement circuit models using large-scale matrix-product state simulations, and discuss generalizations to higher dimensions.
The dynamics of monitored systems can exhibit a measurement-induced phase transition (MIPT) between entangling and disentangling phases, tuned by the measurement rate. When the dynamics obeys a continuous symmetry, the entangling phase further splits into a fuzzy phase and a sharp phase based on the scaling of fluctuations of the symmetry charge. While the sharpening transition for Abelian symmetries is well understood analytically, no such understanding exists for the non- Abelian case. In this work, building on a recent analytical solution of the MIPT on tree-like circuit architectures (where qubits are repatedly added or removed from the system in a recursive pattern), we study entanglement and sharpening transitions in monitored dynamical quantum trees obeying U(1) and SU(2) symmetries. The recursive structure of tree tensor networks enables powerful analytical and numerical methods to determine the phase diagrams in both cases. In the U(1) case, we analytically derive a Fisher-KPP-like differential equation that allows us to locate the critical point and identify its properties. We find that the entanglement/purification and sharpening transitions generically occur at distinct measurement rates. In the SU(2) case, we find that the fuzzy phase is generic, and a sharp phase is possible only in the limit of maximal measurement rate. In this limit, we analytically solve the boundaries separating the fuzzy and sharp phases, and find them to be in agreement with exact numerical simulations.
Repeated local measurements of quantum many-body systems can induce a phase transition in their entanglement structure. These measurement-induced phase transitions (MIPTs) have been studied for various types of dynamics, yet most cases yield quantitatively similar critical exponents, making it unclear how many distinct universality classes are present. Here, we probe the properties of the conformal field theories governing these MIPTs using a numerical transfer-matrix method, which allows us to extract the effective central charge, as well as the first few low-lying scaling dimensions of operators at these critical points for (1+1)-dimensional systems. Our results provide convincing evidence that the generic and Clifford MIPTs for qubits lie in different universality classes and that both are distinct from the percolation transition for qudits in the limit of large on-site Hilbert space dimension. For the generic case, we find strong evidence of multifractal scaling of correlation functions at the critical point, reflected in a continuous spectrum of scaling dimensions.