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arXiv:2503.22846 · Physical Review A

Theory of the correlated quantum Zeno effect in a monitored qubit dimer

Severino Zeni, Gobinda Chakraborty, Alessandro Romito, Alberto Biella

Published May 12, 2026• 0 citations
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Abstract

We theoretically investigate the stochastic dynamics of two qubits subject to one- and two-site correlated continuous weak measurements. When measurements dominate over the local unitary evolution, the system's dynamics is constrained and part of the physical Hilbert space becomes inaccessible: a typical signature of the quantum Zeno (QZ) effect. In this work, we show how the competition between these two measurement processes gives rise to two distinct QZ regimes, which we dubbed and , characterized by a different topology of the allowed region of the physical Hilbert space, being a simply and nonsimply connected domain, respectively. We develop a theory based on a stochastic Gutzwiller ansatz for the wave function that is able to capture the structure of the phase diagram. Finally we show how the two QZ regimes are intimately connected to the topology of the flow of the underlying non-Hermitian Hamiltonian governing the no-click evolution.

DOI
10.1103/x8n3-2fxt

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We theoretically investigate the stochastic dynamics of two qubits subject to one- and two-site correlated continuous weak measurements. When measurements dominate over the local unitary evolution, the system's dynamics is constrained and part of the physical Hilbert space becomes inaccessible: a typical signature of the quantum Zeno (QZ) effect. In this work, we show how the competition between these two measurement processes gives rise to two distinct QZ regimes, which we dubbed and , characterized by a different topology of the allowed region of the physical Hilbert space, being a simply and nonsimply connected domain, respectively. We develop a theory based on a stochastic Gutzwiller ansatz for the wave function that is able to capture the structure of the phase diagram. Finally we show how the two QZ regimes are intimately connected to the topology of the flow of the underlying non-Hermitian Hamiltonian governing the no-click evolution.
We present a theoretical and numerical study of measurement-induced phase transitions and quantum Zeno dynamics in continuously monitored open many-body systems. Moving beyond closed unitary systems, we investigate the competition between chaotic unitary evolution and continuous weak measurements by employing the stochastic Schrödinger equation (quantum jump Monte Carlo) formalism and non-hermitian effective Hamiltonians. Our analysis examines the transition from area-law to volume-law entanglement scaling, mutual information properties, and the critical scaling hypothesis near the measurement-rate threshold. Furthermore, we derive original analytical estimates for the quantum correlation damping decrement in the regime of strong Zeno suppression and validate the theoretical findings using stochastic trajectory numerical simulation protocols with finite-size scaling.
It is well known that by repeatedly measuring a quantum system it is possible to completely freeze its dynamics into a well defined state, a signature of the quantum Zeno effect. Here we show that for a many-body system evolving under competing unitary evolution and variable-strength measurements the onset of the Zeno effect takes the form of a sharp phase transition. Using the Quantum Ising chain with continuous monitoring of the transverse magnetization as paradigmatic example we show that for weak measurements the entanglement produced by the unitary dynamics remains protected, and actually enhanced by the monitoring, while only above a certain threshold the system is sharply brought into an uncorrelated Zeno state. We show that this transition is invisible to the average dynamics, but encoded in the rare fluctuations of the stochastic measurement process, which we show to be perfectly captured by a non-Hermitian Hamiltonian which takes the form of a Quantum Ising model in an imaginary valued transverse field. We provide analytical results based on the fermionization of the non-Hermitian Hamiltonian in supports of our exact numerical calculations.
Quantum Zeno dynamics constrains a continuously monitored system to measurement-selected subspaces. Here we show that the structure of such Zeno subspaces can be governed by a \emph{latent symmetry}, namely a symmetry that is absent from the geometry of the underlying physical network. We consider a minimal circuit-QED network of coupled microwave resonators subject to quantum-nondemolition (QND) monitoring of local photon occupations. Two distinguished resonators are geometrically inequivalent, yet are exactly exchanged by a latent symmetry of the network. Strong monitoring partitions the single-excitation Hilbert space into three quantum-Zeno subspaces, two of which correspond to localization on the distinguished resonators. Latent symmetry exactly exchanges these two Zeno subspaces and enforces identical escape and residence statistics despite their different microscopic environments. In the strong-measurement regime their residence times grow linearly with the measurement strength and diverge in the ideal Zeno limit, where the measurement subspaces become dynamically disconnected. Our results show that latent symmetry can act as a hidden organizing principle of quantum Zeno dynamics, imposing exact relations between measurement-selected subspaces that are geometrically inequivalent in the physical system.
We investigate quantum work statistics within the standard two-point measurement scheme in continuously monitored quantum systems, including the effects of generalized unitary evolution, possibly controlled by quantum circuit models, and multiple generalized measurements as well as postselection of trajectories. We derive an explicit expression for the work generating function that naturally incorporates non-Hermitian dynamics arising from quantum jump processes and reveals deviations from the standard Jarzynski equality due to measurement-induced asymmetries. We illustrate our theoretical framework by analyzing a one-dimensional transverse-field Ising model under local spin monitoring. In this model, increased measurement strength projects the system onto the no-click state, leading to a suppression of energy fluctuations and measurement-induced energy saturation, reminiscent of the quantum Zeno effect. Moreover, we find signatures of the measurement-induced transition observed in the no-click limit in the moments of the work distribution.
In the quantum Zeno effect, quantum measurements can block the coherent oscillation of a two level system by freezing its state to one of the measurement eigenstates. The effect is conventionally controlled by the measurement frequency. Here we study the development of the Zeno regime as a function of the measurement strength for a continuous partial measurement. We show that the onset of the Zeno regime is marked by a cascade of transitions in the system dynamics as the measurement strength is increased. Some of these transitions are only apparent in the collective behavior of individual quantum trajectories and are invisible to the average dynamics. They include the appearance of a region of dynamically inaccessible states and of singularities in the steady-state probability distribution of states. These predicted dynamical features, which can be readily observed in current experiments, show the coexistence of fundamentally unpredictable quantum jumps with those continuously monitored and reverted in recent experiments.
According to the quantum Zeno effect (QZ), frequent observations of a system can dramatically slow down its dynamical evolution. We show that the QZ is a physical consequence of the statistical indistinguishability of neighboring quantum states. The time scale of the problem is expressed in terms of the Fisher information and we demonstrate that the Zeno dynamics of particle entangled states might require quite smaller measurement intervals than classically correlated states. We propose an interferometric experiment to test the prediction.