We identify localizable entanglement (LE) as an order parameter for measurement-induced phase transitions (MIPT). LE exhibits universal finite-size scaling with critical exponents that match previous MIPT results and gives a nice operational interpretation connecting MIPTs to classical percolation. Remarkably, we find that LE decays exponentially with distance in the area-law phase as opposed to being essentially constant for the volume-law phase thereby, discover an intrinsic length scale
ξE that diverges at the critical measurement probability
pc. While classical percolation transition captures successful transport across a network, MIPT as characterized by LE can be interpreted as quantifying the amount of quantum teleportation between two given nodes in a quantum circuit. Building on this insight, we propose a two-ancilla protocol that provides an experimentally accessible readout of entanglement redistribution across the transition.
Consider a rectangular grid of qubits in 2D with single-qubit and nearest-neighbor two-qubit operations subject to local stochastic Pauli noise. At different length scales, this setup describes both a single quantum computing device with geometrically limited connectivity between qubits arranged on a disc, and planar networks composed of quantum repeater stations of constant size. We give a protocol which robustly generates entanglement between distant qubits in this setup. For noise below a constant threshold error strength, it generates a constant-fidelity Bell pair between qubits separated by an arbitrarily large distance
R. To generate distance-
R entanglement, a rectangular grid of qubits of dimensions
Θ(R)×Θ(poly(logR)) suffices. Our protocol applies quantum operations in one shot, establishing a Bell state in a constant time up to a known Pauli correction. In contrast, existing entanglement generation protocols either require local quantum devices controlling a number of qubits growing with the targeted distance, or are not single-shot, i.e., have a distance-dependent execution time. The protocol leverages many-body entanglement in networks and provides the first example of a short-range entangled state in 2D with long-range localizable entanglement robust to local stochastic Pauli noise. As an immediate corollary, we construct a 2D-local stabilizer Hamiltonian whose Gibbs states possess long-range localizable entanglement at constant positive temperature.