Effects of monitoring on entanglement dynamics for $1+1$D ${\mathbb{Z}}_2$ lattice gauge theory

Abstract

The $(1+1)$-dimensional ${\mathbb{Z}}_2$ gauge theory is the simplest model that allows for quantum simulation to probe the fundamental aspects of a gauge theory coupled with dynamical fermions. To reliably benchmark such a system, it is crucial to understand the non-unitary quantum dynamics arising from effective non-Hermitian evolution and post-selected monitoring protocols. This work focuses on the post-selected non-Hermitian filtering dynamics of a ${\mathbb{Z}}_2$ gauge theory, where the non-Hermitian terms are associated with local and non-local gauge-invariant operators naturally present in the theory. We interpret the resulting dynamics as post-selected filtering, where different operator sectors are coupled to loss channels with different rates. This gives a unified framework for both the local electric flux and particle-number terms and the non-local mesonic hopping term. Tensor network calculations are performed to probe the effect of the filtering for larger lattice sizes (up to 256-site systems). Using Matrix Product State calculations, the dynamics of entanglement entropy are studied as a function of the filtering rate and the coupling constant. We find that, under both local and non-local filtering, the late-time saturation value of the bipartite entanglement entropy remains independent of system size, providing no evidence of a measurement-induced phase transition-like phenomenon in the post-selected dynamics across the range of filtering strengths, evolution times, and system sizes considered here.

26 pages, 15 figures, physical interpretation of the study is clarified, abstract and title modified, typos fixed