Quantum Trajectory Entanglement in Seeded Boundary Time Crystals

Abstract

We investigate the entanglement dynamics along quantum trajectories during the seeding of time-crystalline order in a boundary time crystal (BTC). Specifically, how entanglement spreads among different spin ensembles when a BTC attempts to seed its time-crystalline behavior onto otherwise static spin ensembles, through a collective dissipative channel. We analyse both the dynamical growth of entanglement in time and the steady-state properties of the system. Our results reveal two fundamentally distinct regimes. In the seeded BTC phase, the steady-state entanglement entropy between the ensembles grows with system size $N$, accompanied by macroscopic fluctuations along the trajectories. In contrast, in the non-seeded static phase, both the steady-state entanglement and its fluctuations decay exponentially with $N$. The model thus features a measurement-induced phase transition (MIPT) driven by the seeding mechanism. Furthermore, these findings establish dissipative seeding as a powerful mechanism for controlling quantum correlations in open many-body systems, with direct experimental relevance to this class of model without a postselection barrier.