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We investigate ensembles of Matrix Product States (MPSs) generated by quantum circuit evolution followed by projection onto MPSs with a fixed bond dimension $\chi$. Specifically, we consider ensembles produced by: (i) random sequential unitary circuits, (ii) random brickwork unitary circuits, and (iii) circuits involving both unitaries and projective measurements. In all cases, we characterize the spectra of the MPS transfer matrix and show that, for the first two cases in the thermodynamic limit, they exhibit a finite universal value of the spectral gap in the limit of large $\chi$, albeit with different spectral densities. We show that a finite gap in this limit does not imply a finite correlation length, as the mutual information between two large subsystems increases with $\chi$ in a manner determined by the entire shape of the spectral density. The latter differs for different types of circuits, indicating that these ensembles of MPS retain relevant physical information about the underlying microscopic dynamics. In particular, in the presence of monitoring, we demonstrate the existence of a measurement-induced entanglement transition (MIPT) in MPS ensembles, with the averaged dimension of the transfer matrix's null space serving as the effective order parameter.

We consider the time evolution of multiple clusters of Brownian Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK), i.e. systems of N Majorana fermions with a noisy interaction term. In addition to the unitary evolution, we introduce two-fermion monitorings. We construct a coherent states path integral of the dynamics by generalizing spin coherent states for higher symmetry groups. We then demonstrate that the evolution of the replicated density matrix can be described by an effective field theory for the "light" degrees of freedom, i.e. the quantum fluctuations generated by the unitary evolution. This method is applied to both quadratic, where the field theory reduces to the nonlinear sigma model (NLSM), and also to interacting SYK clusters. We show that in the stationary regime, two monitored clusters exhibit linear-in-N entanglement, with a proportionality factor dependent on the strength of the unitary coupling., Comment: 40 pages, 5 figures

We study the time evolution of long quantum spin chains subjected to continuous monitoring via matrix product states (MPS) at fixed bond dimension, with the Time-Dependent Variational Principle (TDVP) algorithm. The latter gives an effective classical non-linear evolution with a conserved charge, which approximates the real quantum evolution up to an error. We show that the error rate displays a phase transition in the monitoring strength, which can be well detected by scaling analysis with relatively low values of bond dimensions. The method allows for an efficient numerical determination of the critical measurement-induced phase transition parameters in many-body quantum systems. Moreover, in the presence of U(1) global spin charge, we show the existence of a charge-sharpening transition well separated from the entanglement transition which we detect by studying the charge fluctuations of a local sub-part of the system at very large times. Our work substantiates the TDVP time evolution as a method to identify measured-induced phase transitions in systems of arbitrary dimensions and sizes., Comment: 5 pages + SM, refs added and figures updated with more data

We investigate the crucial role played by a global symmetry in the purification timescales and the phase transitions of monitored free fermionic systems separating a mixed and a pure phase. Concretely, we study Majorana and Dirac circuits with $\mathbb{Z}_2$ and U(1) symmetries, respectively. In the first case, we demonstrate the mixed phase of $L$ sites has a purification timescale that scales as $\tau_P\sim L \ln L $. At $1\ll t\ll \tau_P$ the system attains a finite residual entropy, that we use to unveil the critical properties of the purification transition. In contrast, free fermions with U(1) manifest a sublinear purification timescale at any measurement rate and an apparent Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless criticality. We find the mixed phase is characterized by $\tau_P\sim L^{\alpha(p)}$, with a continuously varying exponent $\alpha(p)<1$., Comment: 7 pgase, 3 figures, 3 pages of supplementary material