Transitions in the Learnability of Global Charges from Local Measurements.

We consider monitored quantum systems with a global conserved charge, and ask how efficiently an observer ("eavesdropper") can learn the global charge of such systems from local projective measurements. We find phase transitions as a function of the measurement rate, depending on how much information about the quantum dynamics the eavesdropper has access to. For random unitary circuits with U(1) symmetry, we present an optimal classical classifier to reconstruct the global charge from local measurement outcomes only. We demonstrate the existence of phase transitions in the performance of this classifier in the thermodynamic limit. We also study numerically improved classifiers by including some knowledge about the unitary gates pattern.

Field Theory of Charge Sharpening in Symmetric Monitored Quantum Circuits.

Monitored quantum circuits (MRCs) exhibit a measurement-induced phase transition between area-law and volume-law entanglement scaling. MRCs with a conserved charge additionally exhibit two distinct volume-law entangled phases that cannot be characterized by equilibrium notions of symmetry-breaking or topological order, but rather by the nonequilibrium dynamics and steady-state distribution of charge fluctuations. These include a charge-fuzzy phase in which charge information is rapidly scrambled leading to slowly decaying spatial fluctuations of charge in the steady state, and a charge-sharp phase in which measurements collapse quantum fluctuations of charge without destroying the volume-law entanglement of neutral degrees of freedom. By taking a continuous-time, weak-measurement limit, we construct a controlled replica field theory description of these phases and their intervening charge-sharpening transition in one spatial dimension. We find that the charge fuzzy phase is a critical phase with continuously evolving critical exponents that terminates in a modified Kosterlitz-Thouless transition to the short-range correlated charge-sharp phase. We numerically corroborate these scaling predictions also hold for discrete-time projective-measurement circuit models using large-scale matrix-product state simulations, and discuss generalizations to higher dimensions.