The dynamics of a quantum-many body system subject to measurements is naturally described by an ensemble of quantum trajectories, which can feature measurement-induced phase transitions (MIPTs). This phenomenon cannot be revealed through ensemble-averaged observables, but it requires the ability to discriminate each trajectory separately, making its experimental observation extremely challenging. We explore the fate of MIPTs under an observer's reduced ability to discriminate each measurement outcome. This introduces uncertainty in the state of the system, causing observables to probe a restricted subset of trajectories rather than a single one. By introducing an exactly-solvable Liouvillian model, we examine how long-time spatial correlations are influenced by varying degrees of trajectory averaging. We compute exactly the correlation matrix, Liouvillian gap, and entanglement negativity to demonstrate that averaging over multiple realizations introduces an effective finite lengthscale, beyond which long-range correlations are suppressed. This suggests that partial averaging over trajectories conceals the critical features of individual realizations, thereby blurring away the signatures of distinct measurement-induced phases.
The dynamics of a quantum-many body system subject to measurements is naturally described by an ensemble of quantum trajectories, which can feature measurement-induced phase transitions (MIPTs). This phenomenon cannot be revealed through ensemble-averaged observables, but it requires the ability to discriminate each trajectory separately, making its experimental observation extremely challenging. We explore the fate of MIPTs under an observer's reduced ability to discriminate each measurement outcome. This introduces uncertainty in the state of the system, causing observables to probe a restricted subset of trajectories rather than a single one. By introducing an exactly-solvable Liouvillian model, we examine how long-time spatial correlations are influenced by varying degrees of trajectory averaging. We compute exactly the correlation matrix, Liouvillian gap, and entanglement negativity to demonstrate that averaging over multiple realizations introduces an effective finite lengthscale, beyond which long-range correlations are suppressed. This suggests that partial averaging over trajectories conceals the critical features of individual realizations, thereby blurring away the signatures of distinct measurement-induced phases.
Information-theoretic phase transitions, such as the measurement-induced phase transition (MIPT), characterize the robustness of quantum dynamics to local monitoring and are naturally formulated in terms of trajectories conditioned on typical measurement outcomes, which are naively accessible only through postselection. Here, we implement forced measurements to investigate how explicit postselection alters the nature of the transition. We find that postselection fundamentally alters the universality class by reweighting trajectories that are otherwise rare. In particular, we obtain a correlation-length exponent ν≈2.1 larger than that of the standard MIPT and a negative effective central charge ceff≈−0.35. We also compare the postselected MIPT to the entanglement transition of random tensor networks, and demonstrate that their universality class is the same. This setup further allows time-periodic, translationally invariant circuits with postselected weak measurements. In both models, we find that an on-site dimension of at least 3 (qutrits but not qubits) is necessary to induce a transition.
Nascent quantum computers motivate the exploration of quantum many-body systems in nontraditional scenarios. For example, it has become natural to explore the dynamics of systems evolving under both unitary evolution and measurement. Such systems can undergo dynamical phase transitions in the entanglement properties of quantum trajectories conditional on the measurement outcomes. Here, we explore dynamics in which one attempts to (locally) use those measurement outcomes to steer the system toward a target state, and we study the resulting phase diagram as a function of the measurement and feedback rates. Steering succeeds when the measurement and feedback rates exceed a threshold, yielding an absorbing-state transition in the trajectory-averaged density matrix. We argue that the absorbing-state transition generally occurs at different critical parameters from the entanglement transition in individual trajectories and has distinct critical properties. The efficacy of steering depends on the nature of the target state: in particular, for local dynamics targeting long-range correlated states, steering is necessarily slow and the entanglement and steering transitions are well separated in parameter space.
Localization, which is typically induced by disorder, is an exotic phenomenon where a quantum state fails to spread over the entire Hilbert space. Recently, measurement is utilized as another mechanism to localize a quantum state in nonunitary quantum circuits and continuously monitored systems, which exhibit novel quantum phenomena dubbed measurement-induced phase transitions (MIPTs). However, while both the disorder and the measurement localize the wave function and suppress the entanglement spreading, it is still not clear whether they exhibit the same localization properties. In this seminar, we study localization properties of continuously monitored dynamics and associated MIPTs in disordered quantum many-body systems on the basis of the quantum trajectory approach [1]. By calculating the fidelity between random quantum trajectories, we demonstrate that the disorder and the measurement can lead to dynamical properties distinct from each other, although both have a power to suppress the entanglement spreading. In particular, in the large-disorder regime with weak measurement, we elucidate that the fidelity exhibits an anomalous power-law decay before saturating to the steady-state value. Furthermore, we propose a general method to access physical quantities for quantum trajectories in continuously monitored dynamics without resorting to postselection. It is argued that this scheme drastically reduces the cost of experiments. Our results can be tested in ultracold atoms subject to continuous measurement. Reference [1] K. Yamamoto and R. Hamazaki, arXiv:2301.07291, Phys. Rev. B (Letter) in press.
Out-of-equilibrium quantum many-body systems stand at the forefront of modern theoretical physics, addressing fundamental questions on thermalization, transport, and universal phenomena. These fields, already well established in condensed matter, statistical physics, quantum optics, and quantum information theory, are progressively gaining even greater relevance with the rapid development of quantum technologies and simulation, which inherently operate in dynamical regimes. In recent years, the traditional paradigm of unitary quantum evolution has been expanded to include measurements, opening new directions in out-of-equilibrium physics. At the core of these advances lie measurement-induced phase transitions (MIPTs), which have emerged as a new class of dynamical critical phenomena characterizing the general behavior of monitored quantum dynamics. When external monitoring intertwines with unitary evolution, many-body quantum correlations change their structure, giving rise to distinct entanglement phases of matter. This discovery has sparked enormous interest in MIPTs, leading to significant advances in open quantum systems, entanglement theory, and more broadly quantum complexity. Despite much progress, a full understanding of monitored many-body dynamics is far from complete, leaving several open questions on the nature of MIPTs, their experimental observability, and the possibilities offered by measurements to enhance control over synthetic quantum matter. These issues persist due to the intrinsic complexity of the problem and the lack of efficient tools to study it, mainly caused by the stochastic character of monitored evolution. This thesis addresses these challenges by expanding the investigation of measurement-induced phenomena in new settings and introducing innovative probes of entanglement and many-body quantum complexity for MIPTs. A core question we investigate is the role of symmetries, non-ergodicity, and especially integrability in measurement-induced criticality, which dramatically affect the non-equilibrium phases. We further explore how these phenomena extend beyond bipartite quantum correlations to multipartite entanglement and quantum non-stabilizerness, highlighting the non-trivial interplay between measurements and complexity notions rooted in quantum information theory. Finally, we focus on the compelling problem of decoherence, modeling how noise spoils entanglement structures. These findings, supported by advanced numerical simulations and theoretical analysis, deepen the current understanding of entanglement, complexity, and integrability in monitored quantum many-body systems, offering new perspectives on their rich behavior. In parallel, we address the experimental problem of dissipation in MIPTs, which is of key relevance for practical implementations. We anticipate the present investigation to foster future research on the nature of monitored dynamical critical phenomena and, more broadly, the applications of measurements in quantum state evolution.
Metastability in open quantum systems is usually inferred from spectral separation in the Liouvillian, which governs unconditional, ensemble-averaged dynamics. We show that this diagnosis is incomplete at the level of individual quantum trajectories: conditioned realizations of the same unconditional dynamics can bypass, transiently access, or operationally preserve a metastable memory, depending on the monitored channel and the observed record. We demonstrate these mechanisms in a driven-dissipative nonlinear oscillator realizing a quantum associative memory, by comparing spectra, target fidelities, and phase-space distributions. The non-Hermitian dynamics obtained by post-selecting on the absence of detected events supports metastable retrieval, but with a distinct long-time fate: normalization selects the least-decaying mode of the non-Hermitian spectrum rather than the addressed memory branch. In contrast, stochastic jump trajectories can preserve retrieval over extended times when the post-measurement update remains compatible with the coherent memory structure. Thus trajectory-level metastability is not determined by the averaged generator alone; it requires compatibility between the monitored channel, the measurement record, and the metastable manifold.
Stochastic quantum trajectories, such as pure state evolutions under unitary dynamics and random measurements, offer a crucial ensemble description of many-body open system dynamics. Recent studies have highlighted that individual quantum trajectories also encode essential physical information. Prominent examples include measurement-induced phase transitions, where a pure quantum state corresponding to fixed measurement outcomes (trajectories) exhibits distinct entanglement phases, depending on the measurement rate. However, direct observation of this effect is hindered by an exponential postselection barrier, whereby the probability of realizing a specific trajectory is exponentially small. We propose a deterministic method to efficiently prepare quantum trajectories in polynomial time using imaginary time evolution and, thus, overcome this fundamental challenge. We demonstrate that our method applies to a certain class of quantum states, and argue that universal approaches do not exist for any quantum trajectories. Our result paves the way for experimentally exploring the physics of individual quantum trajectories at scale and enables direct observation of certain postselection-dependent phenomena.