Measurement-induced dynamics of many-body systems at quantum criticality

Abstract: We consider a dynamic protocol for quantum many-body systems, which enables to study the interplay between unitary Hamiltonian driving and random local projective measurements. While the unitary dynamics tends to increase entanglement, local measurements tend to disentangle, thus favoring decoherence. Close to a quantum transition where the system develops critical correlations with diverging length scales, the competition of the two drivings is analyzed within a dynamic scaling framework, allowing us to identify a regime (dynamic scaling limit) where the two mechanisms develop a nontrivial interplay. We perform a numerical analysis of this protocol in a measurement-driven Ising chain, which supports the scaling laws we put forward. The local measurement process generally tends to suppress quantum correlations, even in the dynamic scaling limit. The power law of the decay of the quantum correlations turns out to be enhanced at the quantum transition.