Quantum circuits utilizing measurement to evolve a quantum wave function offer a new and rich playground to engineer unconventional entanglement dynamics. Here, we introduce a hybrid, nonreciprocal setup featuring a quantum circuit, whose updates are conditioned on the state of a classical dynamical agent. In our example the circuit is represented by a Majorana quantum chain controlled by a classical N-state Potts chain undergoing pair flips. The local orientation of the classical spins controls whether randomly drawn local measurements on the quantum chain are allowed or not. This imposes a dynamical kinetic constraint on the entanglement growth, described by the transfer matrix of an N-colored loop model. It yields an equivalent description of the circuit by an SU(N)-symmetric Temperley-Lieb Hamiltonian or by a kinetically constrained surface growth model for an N-component height field. For N=2, we find a diffusive growth of the half-chain entanglement toward a stationary profile S(L)∼L^{1/2} for L sites. For N≥3, the kinetic constraints impose Hilbert space fragmentation, yielding subdiffusive growth toward S(L)∼L^{0.57}. This showcases how the control by a classical dynamical agent can enrich the entanglement dynamics in quantum circuits, paving a route toward novel entanglement dynamics in nonreciprocal hybrid circuit architectures.
Quantum circuits utilizing measurement to evolve a quantum wave function offer a new and rich playground to engineer unconventional entanglement dynamics. Here, we introduce a hybrid, nonreciprocal setup featuring a quantum circuit, whose updates are conditioned on the state of a classical dynamical agent. In our example the circuit is represented by a Majorana quantum chain controlled by a classical N-state Potts chain undergoing pair flips. The local orientation of the classical spins controls whether randomly drawn local measurements on the quantum chain are allowed or not. This imposes a dynamical kinetic constraint on the entanglement growth, described by the transfer matrix of an N-colored loop model. It yields an equivalent description of the circuit by an SU(N)-symmetric Temperley-Lieb Hamiltonian or by a kinetically constrained surface growth model for an N-component height field. For N=2, we find a diffusive growth of the half-chain entanglement toward a stationary profile S(L)∼L^{1/2} for L sites. For N≥3, the kinetic constraints impose Hilbert space fragmentation, yielding subdiffusive growth toward S(L)∼L^{0.57}. This showcases how the control by a classical dynamical agent can enrich the entanglement dynamics in quantum circuits, paving a route toward novel entanglement dynamics in nonreciprocal hybrid circuit architectures.
We introduce a family of hybrid quantum circuits involving unitary gates and projective measurements that display a measurement-induced phase transition. Remarkably, the volume-law phase featuring logarithmic entanglement growth for certain initial states. We attribute this slow entanglement growth to the similarly slow growth of the participation entropy, which bounds the entanglement. Furthermore, the quantum circuit can be mapped to a classical spin model with real positive Boltzmann weights which involves local multi-spin interactions and displays glassy dynamics at finite temperature. We trace the origin of both the slow quantum dynamics and the classical glassiness to the presence of large, non-local symmetry operators. Our work establishes a novel connection between quantum entanglement dynamics and classical glassy behavior, offering a new geometric perspective on entanglement phase transitions.
Repeated local measurements typically have adversarial effects on entangling unitary dynamics, as local measurements usually degrade entanglement. However, recent works on measurement-only dynamics have shown that strongly entangled states can be generated solely through non-commuting random multi-site and multi-spin projective measurements. In this work, we explore a generalized measurement setup in a system without intrinsic unitary dynamics and show that volume-law entangled states can be generated through local, non-random, yet non-commuting measurements. Specifically, we construct a one-dimensional model comprising a main fermionic chain and an auxiliary (ancilla) chain, where generalized measurements are performed by locally coupling the system to detector qubits. Our results demonstrate that long-time states with volume-law entanglement or mutual information are generated between different parts of the main chain purely through non-unitary measurement dynamics. Remarkably, we find that such large-entanglement generation can be achieved using only the measurements of one-body operators. Moreover, we show that measurements of non-local higher-body operators can be used to control and reduce entanglement generation by introducing kinetic constraints to the dynamics. We discuss the statistics of entanglement measures along the quantum trajectories, the approach to stationary distributions of entanglement or long-time steady states, and the associated notions of limited ergodicity in the measurement-only dynamics. Our findings highlight the potential of non-random measurement protocols for controlled entanglement generation and the study of non-unitary many-body dynamics.
We study the entanglement dynamics of quantum automaton (QA) circuits in the presence of U(1) symmetry. We find that the second Rényi entropy grows diffusively with a logarithmic correction as tlnt , saturating the bound established by Huang \cite{Huang_2020}. Thanks to the special feature of QA circuits, we understand the entanglement dynamics in terms of a classical bit string model. Specifically, we argue that the diffusive dynamics stems from the rare slow modes containing extensively long domains of spin 0s or 1s. Additionally, we investigate the entanglement dynamics of monitored QA circuits by introducing a composite measurement that preserves both the U(1) symmetry and properties of QA circuits. We find that as the measurement rate increases, there is a transition from a volume-law phase where the second Rényi entropy persists the diffusive growth (up to a logarithmic correction) to a critical phase where it grows logarithmically in time. This interesting phenomenon distinguishes QA circuits from non-automaton circuits such as U(1)-symmetric Haar random circuits, where a volume-law to an area-law phase transition exists, and any non-zero rate of projective measurements in the volume-law phase leads to a ballistic growth of the Rényi entropy.
Projective measurements in random quantum circuits lead to a rich breadth of entanglement phases and extend the realm of nonunitary quantum dynamics.Here, we explore the connection between measurement-only quantum circuits in one spatial dimension and the statistical mechanics of loop models in two dimensions.While Gaussian Majorana circuits admit a microscopic mapping to loop models, for non-Gaussian, i.e., generic Clifford, circuits, a corresponding mapping may emerge only on a coarse-grained scale.We then focus on a fundamental symmetry of loop models: the orientability of worldlines.We discuss how orientability enters in the measurement framework, acting as a separatrix for the universal long-wavelength behavior in a circuit.When orientability is broken, the circuit falls into the universality class of closely packed loops with crossings (CPLC) and features a Goldstone phase with a peculiar, universal log 2 ðLÞ scaling of the entanglement entropy.In turn, when orientability is preserved, the longwavelength behavior of the circuit mimics that of (coupled) two-dimensional Potts models.We demonstrate the strength of the loop model approach by numerically simulating a variety of measurement-only Clifford circuits.Upon varying the set of measured operators, a rich circuit dynamics is observed, ranging from CPLC to the one-state Potts model (percolation), the two-state Potts model (Ising), and coupled Potts models (Berezhinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless) universality class.Loop models, thus, provide a handle to access a large class of measurement-only circuits and yield a blueprint on how to realize desired entanglement phases by measurement.
Quantum kinetically constrained models have recently attracted significant attention due to their anomalous dynamics and thermalization. In this work, we introduce a hitherto unexplored family of kinetically constrained models featuring conserved particle number and strong inversion-symmetry breaking due to facilitated hopping. We demonstrate that these models provide a generic example of so-called quantum Hilbert space fragmentation, that is manifested in disconnected sectors in the Hilbert space that are not apparent in the computational basis. Quantum Hilbert space fragmentation leads to an exponential in system size number of eigenstates with exactly zero entanglement entropy across several bipartite cuts. These eigenstates can be probed dynamically using quenches from simple initial product states. In addition, we study the particle spreading under unitary dynamics launched from the domain wall state, and find faster than diffusive dynamics at high particle densities, that crosses over into logarithmically slow relaxation at smaller densities. Using a classically simulable cellular automaton, we reproduce the logarithmic dynamics observed in the quantum case. Our work suggests that particle conserving constrained models with inversion symmetry breaking realize so far unexplored dynamical behavior and invite their further theoretical and experimental studies.
We investigate the phenomenon of Hilbert space fragmentation (HSF) in open quantum systems and find that it can stabilize highly entangled steady states. For concreteness, we consider the Temperley-Lieb model, which exhibits quantum HSF in an entangled basis, and investigate the Lindblad dynamics under two different couplings. First, we couple the system to a dephasing bath that reduces quantum fragmentation to a classical one with the resulting stationary state being separable. We observe that despite vanishing quantum correlations, classical correlations develop due to fluctuations of the remaining conserved quantities, which we show can be captured by a classical stochastic circuit evolution. Second, we use a coupling that preserves the quantum fragmentation structure. We derive a general expression for the steady state, which has a strong coherent memory of the initial state due to the extensive number of noncommuting conserved quantities. We then show that it is highly entangled as quantified by logarithmic negativity.