Entanglement entropy growth in stochastic conformal field theory and the KPZ class

Abstract: We introduce a model of effective conformal quantum field theory in dimension $d=1+1$ coupled to stochastic noise, where Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) class fluctuations can be observed. The analysis of the quantum dynamics of the scaling operators reduces to the study of random trajectories in a random environment, modeled by Brownian vector fields. We use recent results on random walks in random environments to calculate the time-dependent entanglement entropy of a subsystem interval, starting from a factorized state. We find that the fluctuations of the entropy in the large deviation regime are governed by the universal Tracy-Widom distribution. This enlarges the KPZ class, previously observed in random circuit models, to a family of interacting many body quantum systems.