Quantum circuit at criticality

Abstract

We study a simple quantum circuit model which, without need for fine tuning, is very close to sitting at the transition between ergodic and many-body localized (MBL) phases. We probe the properties of the model on large finite-size systems, using a matrix-free exact diagonalization method that takes advantage of the shallow nature of the circuit. Moreover, we provide a qualitative entanglement bottleneck picture to account for the close-to-critical nature of the model.