Practical roadmap to measurement-altered criticality in Rydberg arrays

Abstract: Weak measurements have been predicted to dramatically alter universal properties of quantum critical wavefunctions, though experimental validation remains an open problem. Here we devise a practical scheme for realizing measurement-altered criticality in a chain of Rydberg atoms tuned to Ising and tricritical Ising phase transitions. In particular, we show that projectively measuring a periodic subset of atoms alters quantum critical correlations in distinct ways that one can control via the choice of measured sites and the measurement outcomes. While our protocol relies on post-selection, the measurement outcomes yielding the most dramatic consequences occur with surprisingly large probabilities: O(10%) with chains featuring O(100) sites. Characterizing the proposed post-measurement states requires only an adjustment in the post-process averaging of outcomes used to characterize unmeasured critical states, resulting in minimal additional experimental overhead for demonstrating measurement-altered criticality.