Charge fluctuation and charge-resolved entanglement in a monitored quantum circuit with $U(1)$ symmetry

Abstract

We study a (1+1)-dimensional quantum circuit consisting of Haar-random unitary gates and projective measurements that conserve a total $U(1)$ charge and thus have $U(1)$ symmetry. In addition to a measurement-induced entanglement transition between a volume-law and an area-law entangled phase, we find a phase transition between two phases characterized by bipartite charge fluctuation growing with the subsystem size or staying constant. At this charge-fluctuation transition, steady-state quantities obtained by evolving an initial state with a definitive total charge exhibit critical scaling behaviors akin to Tomonaga-Luttinger-liquid theory for equilibrium critical quantum systems with $U(1)$ symmetry, such as logarithmic scaling of bipartite charge fluctuation, power-law decay of charge correlation functions, and logarithmic scaling of charge-resolved entanglement whose coefficient becomes a universal quadratic function in a flux parameter. These critical features, however, do not persist below the transition in contrast to a recent prediction based on replica field theory and mapping to a classical statistical mechanical model.