Volume-law to area-law entanglement transition in a non-unitary periodic Gaussian circuit

Abstract

We consider Gaussian quantum circuits that alternate unitary gates and post-selected weak measurements, with spatial translation symmetry and time periodicity. We show analytically that such models can host different kinds of measurement-induced phase transitions detected by entanglement entropy, by mapping the time evolution and weak measurements to M\"obius transformations. We demonstrate the existence of a log-law to area-law transition, as well as a volume-law to area-law transition. For the latter, we compute the critical exponent $\nu$ for the Hartley, von Neumann and R\'enyi entropies exactly.