The evolution of a system coupled to baths is commonly described by a master equation that, in the long-time limit, yields a steady-state density matrix. However, when the same evolution is unraveled into quantum trajectories, it is possible to observe a transition in the scaling of entanglement within the system as the system-bath coupling increases - a phenomenon that is invisible in the trajectory-averaged reduced density matrix of the system. Here, we go beyond the paradigm of trajectories from master equations and explore whether a qualitatively analogous entanglement-scaling transition emerges in a single unitary evolution of the combined system-bath setup, without monitoring the dynamics of the system. We investigate the scaling of entanglement in a unitary quantum setup composed of a two-dimensional lattice of free fermions, where each site is coupled to a fermionic bath. As the system-bath coupling increases, the logarithmic fermionic negativity reveals an entanglement transition from logarithmic-law to area-law scaling. This occurs while the system's steady-state properties are trivial, highlighting that the signatures of these different scalings are within the bath-bath correlations. Evidence of the transition is also found in the mutual information and the correlations of the full system-bath setup, suggesting that the entanglement transition is underpinned by a change in the spatial structure of quantum information.
Recent theoretical work has shown that the competition between coherent unitary dynamics and stochastic measurements, performed by the environment, along wave function trajectories can give rise to transitions in the entanglement scaling. In this work, complementary to these previous studies, we analyze a situation where the role of Hamiltonian and dissipative dynamics is reversed. We consider an engineered dissipation, which stabilizes an entangled phase of a quantum $\mathrm{spin}\text{\ensuremath{-}}\frac{1}{2}$ chain, while competing single-particle or interacting Hamiltonian dynamics induce a disentangled phase. Focusing on the single-particle unitary dynamics, we find that the system undergoes an entanglement transition from a logarithmic growth with system size to an area law when the competition ratio between the unitary evolution and the nonunitary dynamics increases. We evidence that the transition manifests itself in state-dependent observables at a finite competition ratio for Hamiltonian and measurement dynamics. On the other hand, it is absent in trajectory-averaged steady-state dynamics, governed by a Lindblad master equation: although purely dissipative dynamics stabilizes an entangled state, for any nonvanishing Hamiltonian contribution the system ends up irremediably in a disordered phase. In addition, a single trajectory analysis reveals that the distribution of the entanglement entropy constitutes an efficient indicator of the transition. Complementarily, we explore the competition of the dissipation with coherent dynamics generated by an interacting Hamiltonian, and demonstrate that the entanglement transition also occurs in this second model. Our results suggest that this type of transition takes place for a broader class of Hamiltonians, underlining its robustness in monitored open quantum many-body systems.
We investigate the scaling of the fermionic logarithmic negativity (FLN) between complementary intervals in the steady state of a driven-dissipative tight-binding critical chain, coupled to two thermal reservoirs at its edges. We compare the predictions of three different master equations, namely a nonlocal Lindblad equation, the Redfield equation, and the recently proposed universal Lindblad equation (ULE). Within the nonlocal Lindblad equation approach, the FLN grows logarithmically with the subsystem size
ℓ, for any value of the system-bath coupling and of the bath parameters. This is consistent with the logarithmic scaling of the mutual information analytically demonstrated in [Phys. Rev. B 106, 235149 (2022)]. In the ultraweak-coupling regime, the Redfield equation and the ULE exhibit the same logarithmic increase; such behavior holds even when moving to moderately weak coupling and intermediate values of
ℓ. However, when venturing beyond this regime, the FLN crosses over to superlogarithmic scaling for both equations.
Recently there has been an intense effort to understand measurement induced transitions, but we still lack a good understanding of non-Markovian effects on these phenomena. To that end, we consider two coupled chains of free fermions, one acting as the system of interest, and one as a bath. The bath chain is subject to Markovian measurements, resulting in an effective non-Markovian dissipative dynamics acting on the system chain which is still amenable to numerical studies in terms of quantum trajectories. Within this setting, we study the entanglement within the system chain, and use it to characterize the phase diagram depending on the ladder hopping parameters and on the measurement probability. For the case of pure state evolution, the system is in an area law phase when the internal hopping of the bath chain is small, while a non-area law phase appears when the dynamics of the bath is fast. The non-area law exhibits a logarithmic scaling of the entropy compatible with a conformal phase, but also displays linear corrections for the finite system sizes we can study. For the case of mixed state evolution, we instead observe regions with both area, and non-area scaling of the entanglement negativity. We quantify the non-Markovianity of the system chain dynamics and find that for the regimes of parameters we study, a stronger non-Markovianity is associated to a larger entanglement within the system.
We explore non-unitary dynamics of
2+1 dimensional free fermions and show that the obtained steady state is critical regardless the strength of the non-unitary evolution. Numerical results indicate that the entanglement entropy has a logarithmic violation of the area-law and the mutual information between two distant regions decays as a power-law function. In particular, we provide an interpretation of these scaling behaviors in terms of a simple quasi-particle pair picture. In addition, we study the dynamics of the correlation function and demonstrate that this system has dynamical exponent
z=1. We argue the dynamics of the correlation function in terms of a classical non-linear master equation. Our method opens a door to a vast number of non-unitary random dynamics in free fermions and can be generalized to any dimensions.
On finite system sizes, monitored one-dimensional free-fermion chains display a broad crossover in entanglement scaling as the measurement rate increases, from sub-extensive behavior at weak monitoring toward an area law at strong monitoring. Analytical field theory and recent large-scale simulations indicate that this apparent change is not a finite-rate transition in the thermodynamic limit. I test, using trajectory-resolved correlation-matrix simulations (chains up to
L=96 and up to 128 Born-rule trajectories per parameter point), whether two quantities built from the single-particle entanglement spectrum are useful finite-size diagnostics: the bipartite particle-number fluctuation
FA=∑kνk(1−νk) and a participation-style effective number of entangling modes,
MA=exp[−∑kwklnwk], with
wk∝νk(1−νk). Both quantities track the crossover. However, for trajectory- and time-averaged steady-state values,
M is nearly a deterministic function of
F: a pooled curve explains 99.7\% of its variance across all rates, so
M carries little independent information. Its main advantage is statistical: its trajectory-to-trajectory coefficient of variation is up to a factor of
∼2 smaller than that of the entropy or
F under strong monitoring. Subsystem-scaling comparisons at
L=48--
96 also show that a pure logarithmic law is not statistically preferred under weak monitoring; a small residual quasi-extensive component and a drifting logarithmic coefficient are instead consistent with a crossover rather than a critical phase. Thus,
F remains the natural experimentally motivated companion to the entropy, whereas
M is best viewed as a variance-reduced numerical summary of essentially the same information.
The generation of entanglement in mixed states is relevant to quantum systems coupled to an environment. The dissipative and mixing properties of the environment are unavoidable in physical platforms for quantum simulation and information processing, where entanglement can be a vital resource. In this work, we explore entanglement and heterogeneity in random Lindbladian dynamics describing open quantum systems. We propose a model of a one-dimensional chain of noninteracting, spinless fermions coupled to a local ensemble of baths. The jump operator mediating the interaction with the bath linked to each site has a power-law tail with an exponent p . We show that the system undergoes volume-to-area law entanglement phase transition in the mixed steady state by tuning p which remains stable in the presence of coherent hopping. Unlike the entanglement transition in the pure-state quantum trajectories of open systems, this transition is exhibited by the averaged steady-state density matrix of the Lindbladian. The steady state in the area-law phase is characterized by a spatial heterogeneity in local population imbalance, while the jump operators exhibit a constant participation ratio of the sites they affect. Our work provides a theoretical description of an entanglement transition realized in long-ranged open quantum systems and provides an avenue to stabilize quantum correlations in mixed states. Published by the American Physical Society 2024