Long-Range Entanglement from Measuring Symmetry-Protected Topological Phases

A fundamental distinction between many-body quantum states are those with short- and long-range entanglement (SRE and LRE). The latter cannot be created by finite-depth circuits, underscoring the nonlocal nature of Schrödinger cat states, topological order, and quantum criticality. Remarkably, examples are known where LRE is obtained by performing single-site measurements on SRE, such as the toric code from measuring a sublattice of a 2D cluster state. However, a systematic understanding of when and how measurements of SRE give rise to LRE is still lacking. Here, we establish that LRE appears upon performing measurements on symmetry-protected topological (SPT) phases—of which the cluster state is one example. For instance, we show how to implement the Kramers-Wannier transformation by adding a cluster SPT to an input state followed by measurement. This transformation naturally relates states with SRE and LRE. An application is the realization of double-semion order when the input state is the Z2 Levin-Gu SPT. Similarly, the addition of fermionic SPTs and measurement leads to an implementation of the Jordan-Wigner transformation of a general state. More generally, we argue that a large class of SPT phases protected by G×H symmetry gives rise to anomalous LRE upon measuring G-charges, and we prove that this persists for generic points in the SPT phase under certain conditions. Our work introduces a new practical tool for using SPT phases as resources for creating LRE, and we uncover the classification result that all states related by sequentially gauging Abelian groups or by Jordan-Wigner transformation are in the same equivalence class, once we augment finite-depth circuits with single-site measurements. In particular, any topological or fracton order with a solvable finite gauge group can be obtained from a product state in this way. Published by the American Physical Society 2024