Directed percolation in nonunitary quantum cellular automata

Abstract

Probabilistic cellular automata (CA) provide a classic framework for studying nonequilibrium statistical physics on lattices. A notable example is the Domany-Kinzel CA, which has been used to investigate the process of directed percolation and the critical dynamics of the nonequilibrium phase transition between absorbing and percolating phases. In this work, we construct a nonunitary quantum CA that generalizes the Domany-Kinzel CA and study the resulting dynamical evolution using numerical simulations using the tensor network infinite time-evolving block decimation (iTEBD) algorithm. We demonstrate that the system undergoes the absorbing/percolating phase transition and that the addition of the Hamiltonian generates coherences, which are a distinct feature of quantum dynamics. A proposal for the implementation of the model with Rydberg array is put forward, which does not require local addressing of individual sites.