New critical states induced by measurement (2301.11337v3)

Abstract: Finding new critical states of matter is an important subject in modern many-body physics. Here we study the effect of measurement and postselection on the critical ground state of a Luttinger liquid theory and show that it can lead to qualitatively new critical states. Depending on the Luttinger parameter $K$, the effect of measurement is irrelevant (relevant) at $K>1$ ($K<1$). We reveal that this causes an entanglement transition between two phases, one with logarithmic entanglement entropy for a subregion ($K>1$), and the other with algebraic entanglement entropy ($K<1$). At the critical point $K=1$, the measurement is marginal, and we find new critical states whose entanglement entropy exhibits a logarithmic behavior with a continuous effective central charge as a function of measurement strength. We also performed numerical density matrix renormalization group and fermionic Gaussian state simulations to support our results. We further discuss promising and feasible routes to experimentally realize new critical states in our work.