Measurement Protected Quantum Phases

Abstract: We introduce a class of hybrid quantum circuits, with random unitaries and projective measurements, which host long-range order in the area law entanglement phase of the steady state. Our primary example is circuits with unitaries respecting a global Ising symmetry and two competing types of measurements. The phase diagram has an area law phase with spin glass order, which undergoes a direct transition to a paramagnetic phase with volume law entanglement, as well as a critical regime. Using mutual information diagnostics, we find that such entanglement transitions preserving a global symmetry are in new universality classes. We analyze generalizations of such hybrid circuits to higher dimensions, which allow for coexistence of order and volume law entanglement, as well as topological order without any symmetry restrictions.