Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Log inSign up
Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Blog
Job Board
Q3AS

© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

TermsPrivacyLegal Notice

arXiv:2512.02100

The measurement-induced phase transition in strongly disordered spin chains

Yicheng Tang, Pradip Kattel, Arijeet Pal, Emil A. Yuzbashyan, J. H. Pixley

cond-mat.dis-nncond-mat.stat-mechquant-phSubmitted Dec 1, 2025• Announced Dec 3, 2025• 0 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We investigate the dynamics of strongly disordered spin chains in the presence of random local measurements. By studying the transverse-field Ising model with a site-dependent random longitudinal field and an effective $l$-bit many-body localized Hamiltonian, we show that the prethermal and MBL regimes are unstable to local measurements along any direction. Any non-zero measurement density induces a volume-law entangled phase with a subsequent phase transition into an area-law state as the measurement rate is further increased. The critical measurement rate $p_c$, where the transition occurs, is exponentially small in the strength of disorder $W$ and the average overlap between the measurement operator and the local integrals of motion $O$ as $p_c \sim \exp[-αW/(1-O^2)]$. In the measurement-induced volume-law phase, the saturation time scales as $t_s \sim L $, contrasting the exponentially slow saturation $t_s \sim e^{aL}$ in the prethermal and MBL regimes at $p = 0$.

Comments
9 pages, 8 figures

Related papers

Localization transition induced by programmable disorder

Jaime L. C. da C. Filho, Zoe Gonzalez Izquierdo, A. Saguia +3 more

We investigate the occurrence of many-body localization (MBL) on a spin-1/2 transverse-field Ising model defined on a Chimera connectivity graph with random exchange interactions and longitudinal fields. We observe a transition from an ergodic phase to a nonthermal phase for individual energy eigenstates induced by a critical disorder strength for the Ising parameters. Our result follows from the analysis of both the mean half-system block entanglement and the energy-level statistics. We identify the critical point associated with this transition using the maximum variance of the block entanglement over the disorder ensemble as a function of the disorder strength. The calculated energy density phase diagram shows the existence of a mobility edge in the energy spectrum. In terms of the energy-level statistics, the system changes from the Gaussian orthogonal ensemble for weak disorder to a Poisson distribution limit for strong randomness, which implies localization behavior. We then realize the time-independent disordered Ising Hamiltonian experimentally using a reverse annealing quench-pause-quench protocol on a $\mathrm{D}$-wave 2000Q programmable quantum annealer. We characterize the transition from the thermal to the localized phase through magnetization measurements at the end of the annealing dynamics, and the results are compatible with our theoretical prediction for the critical point. However, the same behavior can be reproduced using a classical spin-vector Monte Carlo simulation, which suggests that genuine quantum signatures of the phase transition remain out of reach using this experimental platform and protocol.

arXiv:2108.06762•Physical review. B./Physical review. B•Apr 1, 2022•8 citations

Scaling vs entanglement in measurement-induced phase transition for non-integrable systems

Paranjoy Chaki, Protyush Nandi, Subinay Dasgupta +1 more

We find that the measurement-induced phase transition generated by deterministic global measurements, previously observed in the integrable transverse-field Ising model (TFIM), persists in non-integrable variants of the same. To address this question, we consider the TFIM with longitudinal field and the axial next-nearest-neighbor Ising (ANNNI) model. We show that both the survival probability and the bipartite entanglement entropy consistently capture a transition between area-law and volume-law entangled phases for two distinct initial states: a product state with all spins polarized along the transverse direction and a Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) state. Finite-size scaling reveals a pronounced initial state dependence: for the polarized product state, the transition point follows an inverse-square-root scaling with system size in both non-integrable models, consistent with the integrable TFIM, whereas for the GHZ initial state, it deviates from this scaling and approaches zero considerably more slowly in the non-integrable models than in the integrable TFIM. These results establish the robustness of measurement-induced transitions under deterministic measurements against integrability breaking while highlighting the crucial role of the initial state in governing their scaling behavior.

quant-pharXiv:2608.21578•Aug 25, 2026•0 citations

Measurement-induced phase transitions in disordered fermions

Yunxiang Liao, Max Matheussen, Xinghai Zhang

Measurement-induced phase transitions are nonequilibrium transitions between phases characterized by distinct entanglement scaling behaviors, driven by the competition between unitary dynamics and measurements. Despite recent numerical efforts, how quenched disorder affects these transitions remains unclear. In this work, we study a $d$-dimensional noninteracting fermionic system subject to both quenched disorder and continuous monitoring of the local particle density, and derive an effective field theory describing its long-time universal behaviors. We find that the system is governed by the same nonlinear sigma model as in the case of clean monitored fermions, with disorder entering only through a modification of model parameters. This result suggests that the presence or absence of a measurement-induced phase transition is unaffected by the introduction of disorder. In spatial dimension $d=1$, the system exhibits only an area law phase and no transition, whereas in $d>1$, a transition persists between an area$\times$log law phase and an area law phase, with the critical measurement rate suppressed by disorder. Numerical simulation confirms the absence of MIPT in $d=1$, and the linear shift of the critical measurement rate by disorder scattering rate in higher dimensions predicted by analytical theory.

cond-mat.stat-mechCross-listedarXiv:2605.05306•May 8, 2026•0 citations

Diagnostics of entanglement dynamics in noisy and disordered spin chains via the measurement-induced steady-state entanglement transition

T. Boorman, Marcin Szyniszewski, Henning Schomerus +1 more

We utilize the concept of a measurement-induced entanglement transition to analyze the interplay and competition of processes that generate and destroy entanglement in a one-dimensional quantum spin chain evolving under a locally noisy and disordered Hamiltonian. We employ continuous measurements of variable strength to induce a transition from volume to area-law scaling of the steady-state entanglement entropy. While static background disorder systematically reduces the critical measurement strength, this critical value depends nonmonotonically on the strength of nonstatic noise. According to the extracted finite-size scaling exponents, the universality class of the transition is independent of the noise and disorder strength. We interpret the results in terms of the effect of static and nonstatic disorder on the intricate dynamics of the entanglement generation rate due to the Hamiltonian in the absence of measurement, which is fully reflected in the behavior of the critical measurement strength. Our results establish a firm connection between this entanglement growth and the steady-state behavior of the measurement-controlled systems, which therefore can serve as a tool to quantify and investigate features of transient entanglement dynamics in complex many-body systems via a steady-state phase transition.

arXiv:2107.11354•Physical review. B./Physical review. B•Apr 7, 2022•48 citations

Entanglement transitions and multifractality in monitored free-fermions with random long-range hopping

Bo Fan, Antonio M. García-García

We study the entanglement dynamics of a one-dimensional chain of monitored non-interacting complex fermions with random power-law hopping characterized by a decay exponent $α$. For $α\lesssim 1$, in stark contrast with the case of hopping to nearest neighbors, the scaling of the entanglement entropy (EE) of the steady state with system size $L$ is faster than logarithmic for any monitoring or disorder strength and it tends towards a linear (volume-law) scaling for sufficiently small $α\lesssim 1/2$. For $α> 3/2$, the EE is in the area-law phase, namely, no scaling with $L$, for any monitoring strength. For $1 < α\lesssim 3/2$, we identify an $α$-dependent measurement-induced phase transition (MIPT) at a critical value of the monitoring strength separating the mentioned area-law and sub-volume-law phases. At this critical point, the EE scales logarithmically with system size, and the density-density correlation function, closely related to the EE, exhibits multifractal features. These results highlight the importance of superdiffusive classical hopping in the entanglement dynamic of quantum many-body systems and also help differentiate its role with respect to conventional sources of entanglement such as genuine quantum non-locality.

quant-pharXiv:2607.23871•Jul 28, 2026•0 citations

Effects of power-law correlated disorders in XXZ spin chain: Many-body localized to thermal phase transition and its critical regime

Takahiro Orito, Yoshihito Kuno, Ikuo Ichinose

We study a canonical many-body-localized (MBL) system with power-law-correlated disorders: $s=\frac{1}{2}$ spin chain in a random magnetic field. The power-law-correlated disorder can control the critical regime between the MBL and thermal (ergodic) phases by varying its exponent, and it let us investigate the MBL transitions in detail. Static-eigenstate and dynamic properties of MBL are studied by numerical methods for systems with various long-range correlations. By using energy-resolved distribution of the participation ratio (PR) and calculating some physical quantities related to localization length, we show that the MBL transition exhibits certain universal behavior. We also investigate entanglement properties for the static and dynamics system. These studies elucidate the impact of power-law-correlated disorders in the canonical MBL system.

arXiv:2002.12575•Feb 28, 2020•1 citation
We investigate the dynamics of strongly disordered spin chains in the presence of random local measurements. By studying the transverse-field Ising model with a site-dependent random longitudinal field and an effective lll-bit many-body localized Hamiltonian, we show that the prethermal and MBL regimes are unstable to local measurements along any direction. Any non-zero measurement density induces a volume-law entangled phase with a subsequent phase transition into an area-law state as the measurement rate is further increased. The critical measurement rate pcp_cpc​, where the transition occurs, is exponentially small in the strength of disorder WWW and the average overlap between the measurement operator and the local integrals of motion OOO as pc∼exp⁡[−αW/(1−O2)]p_c \sim \exp[-αW/(1-O^2)]pc​∼exp[−αW/(1−O2)]. In the measurement-induced volume-law phase, the saturation time scales as ts∼Lt_s \sim L ts​∼L, contrasting the exponentially slow saturation ts∼eaLt_s \sim e^{aL}ts​∼eaL in the prethermal and MBL regimes at p=0p = 0p=0.
We investigate the occurrence of many-body localization (MBL) on a spin-1/2 transverse-field Ising model defined on a Chimera connectivity graph with random exchange interactions and longitudinal fields. We observe a transition from an ergodic phase to a nonthermal phase for individual energy eigenstates induced by a critical disorder strength for the Ising parameters. Our result follows from the analysis of both the mean half-system block entanglement and the energy-level statistics. We identify the critical point associated with this transition using the maximum variance of the block entanglement over the disorder ensemble as a function of the disorder strength. The calculated energy density phase diagram shows the existence of a mobility edge in the energy spectrum. In terms of the energy-level statistics, the system changes from the Gaussian orthogonal ensemble for weak disorder to a Poisson distribution limit for strong randomness, which implies localization behavior. We then realize the time-independent disordered Ising Hamiltonian experimentally using a reverse annealing quench-pause-quench protocol on a D\mathrm{D}D-wave 2000Q programmable quantum annealer. We characterize the transition from the thermal to the localized phase through magnetization measurements at the end of the annealing dynamics, and the results are compatible with our theoretical prediction for the critical point. However, the same behavior can be reproduced using a classical spin-vector Monte Carlo simulation, which suggests that genuine quantum signatures of the phase transition remain out of reach using this experimental platform and protocol.
We find that the measurement-induced phase transition generated by deterministic global measurements, previously observed in the integrable transverse-field Ising model (TFIM), persists in non-integrable variants of the same. To address this question, we consider the TFIM with longitudinal field and the axial next-nearest-neighbor Ising (ANNNI) model. We show that both the survival probability and the bipartite entanglement entropy consistently capture a transition between area-law and volume-law entangled phases for two distinct initial states: a product state with all spins polarized along the transverse direction and a Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) state. Finite-size scaling reveals a pronounced initial state dependence: for the polarized product state, the transition point follows an inverse-square-root scaling with system size in both non-integrable models, consistent with the integrable TFIM, whereas for the GHZ initial state, it deviates from this scaling and approaches zero considerably more slowly in the non-integrable models than in the integrable TFIM. These results establish the robustness of measurement-induced transitions under deterministic measurements against integrability breaking while highlighting the crucial role of the initial state in governing their scaling behavior.
Measurement-induced phase transitions are nonequilibrium transitions between phases characterized by distinct entanglement scaling behaviors, driven by the competition between unitary dynamics and measurements. Despite recent numerical efforts, how quenched disorder affects these transitions remains unclear. In this work, we study a ddd-dimensional noninteracting fermionic system subject to both quenched disorder and continuous monitoring of the local particle density, and derive an effective field theory describing its long-time universal behaviors. We find that the system is governed by the same nonlinear sigma model as in the case of clean monitored fermions, with disorder entering only through a modification of model parameters. This result suggests that the presence or absence of a measurement-induced phase transition is unaffected by the introduction of disorder. In spatial dimension d=1d=1d=1, the system exhibits only an area law phase and no transition, whereas in d>1d>1d>1, a transition persists between an area×\times×log law phase and an area law phase, with the critical measurement rate suppressed by disorder. Numerical simulation confirms the absence of MIPT in d=1d=1d=1, and the linear shift of the critical measurement rate by disorder scattering rate in higher dimensions predicted by analytical theory.
We utilize the concept of a measurement-induced entanglement transition to analyze the interplay and competition of processes that generate and destroy entanglement in a one-dimensional quantum spin chain evolving under a locally noisy and disordered Hamiltonian. We employ continuous measurements of variable strength to induce a transition from volume to area-law scaling of the steady-state entanglement entropy. While static background disorder systematically reduces the critical measurement strength, this critical value depends nonmonotonically on the strength of nonstatic noise. According to the extracted finite-size scaling exponents, the universality class of the transition is independent of the noise and disorder strength. We interpret the results in terms of the effect of static and nonstatic disorder on the intricate dynamics of the entanglement generation rate due to the Hamiltonian in the absence of measurement, which is fully reflected in the behavior of the critical measurement strength. Our results establish a firm connection between this entanglement growth and the steady-state behavior of the measurement-controlled systems, which therefore can serve as a tool to quantify and investigate features of transient entanglement dynamics in complex many-body systems via a steady-state phase transition.
We study the entanglement dynamics of a one-dimensional chain of monitored non-interacting complex fermions with random power-law hopping characterized by a decay exponent ααα. For α≲1α\lesssim 1α≲1, in stark contrast with the case of hopping to nearest neighbors, the scaling of the entanglement entropy (EE) of the steady state with system size LLL is faster than logarithmic for any monitoring or disorder strength and it tends towards a linear (volume-law) scaling for sufficiently small α≲1/2α\lesssim 1/2α≲1/2. For α>3/2α> 3/2α>3/2, the EE is in the area-law phase, namely, no scaling with LLL, for any monitoring strength. For 1<α≲3/21 < α\lesssim 3/21<α≲3/2, we identify an ααα-dependent measurement-induced phase transition (MIPT) at a critical value of the monitoring strength separating the mentioned area-law and sub-volume-law phases. At this critical point, the EE scales logarithmically with system size, and the density-density correlation function, closely related to the EE, exhibits multifractal features. These results highlight the importance of superdiffusive classical hopping in the entanglement dynamic of quantum many-body systems and also help differentiate its role with respect to conventional sources of entanglement such as genuine quantum non-locality.
We study a canonical many-body-localized (MBL) system with power-law-correlated disorders: s=12s=\frac{1}{2}s=21​ spin chain in a random magnetic field. The power-law-correlated disorder can control the critical regime between the MBL and thermal (ergodic) phases by varying its exponent, and it let us investigate the MBL transitions in detail. Static-eigenstate and dynamic properties of MBL are studied by numerical methods for systems with various long-range correlations. By using energy-resolved distribution of the participation ratio (PR) and calculating some physical quantities related to localization length, we show that the MBL transition exhibits certain universal behavior. We also investigate entanglement properties for the static and dynamics system. These studies elucidate the impact of power-law-correlated disorders in the canonical MBL system.