



@article {3483,
	title = {Zero-temperature entanglement membranes in quantum circuits},
	year = {2024},
	month = {4/3/2024},
	abstract = {<p>In chaotic quantum systems, the entanglement of a region A can be described in terms of the surface tension of a spacetime membrane pinned to the boundary of A. Here, we interpret the tension of this entanglement membrane in terms of the rate at which information \&quot;flows\&quot; across it. For any orientation of the membrane, one can define (generically nonunitary) dynamics across the membrane; we explore this dynamics in various space-time translation-invariant (STTI) stabilizer circuits in one and two spatial dimensions. We find that the flux of information across the membrane in these STTI circuits reaches a steady state. In the cases where this dynamics is nonunitary and the steady state flux is nonzero, this occurs because the dynamics across the membrane is unitary in a subspace of extensive entropy. This generalized unitarity is present in a broad class of STTI stabilizer circuits, and is also present in some special non-stabilizer models. The existence of multiple unitary (or generalized unitary) directions forces the entanglement membrane tension to be a piecewise linear function of the orientation of the membrane; in this respect, the entanglement membrane behaves like an interface in a zero-temperature classical lattice model. We argue that entanglement membranes in random stabilizer circuits that produce volume-law entanglement are also effectively at zero temperature.</p>},
	url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.02975},
	author = {Grace M. Sommers and Sarang Gopalakrishnan and Michael Gullans and David A. Huse}
}
