Quantum conditional mutual information as a probe of measurement-induced entanglement phase transitions

Abstract: We propose that the quantum conditional mutual information (QCMI), computed with a suitably chosen partition of the system, serves as a powerful probe for detecting measurement-induced entanglement phase transitions in monitored quantum circuits. To demonstrate this, we investigate monitored variable-range Clifford circuits and identify the phase boundary between volume-law and area-law entanglement phases by performing finite-size scaling analyses of the QCMI. Assuming that the entanglement entropy exhibits a logarithmic dependence on system size at criticality in short-range interacting cases, we further show that the QCMI allows for the simultaneous determination of both the critical point and the universal coefficient of the logarithmic term in the entanglement entropy via a crossing-point analysis. For the shortest-range interacting case studied, we obtain the thermodynamic-limit value of the coefficient as $\tilde{c}=1.519(3)$, which is significantly smaller than values reported in previous studies.