Measurement as a Shortcut to Long-Range Entangled Quantum Matter

Abstract

The preparation of long-range entangled states using unitary circuits is limited by Lieb-Robinson bounds, but circuits with projective measurements and feedback (“adaptive circuits”) can evade such restrictions. We introduce three classes of local adaptive circuits that enable low-depth preparation of long-range entangled quantum matter characterized by gapped topological orders and conformal field theories (CFTs). The three classes are inspired by distinct physical insights, including tensor-network constructions, the multiscale entanglement renormalization ansatz, and parton constructions. A large class of topological orders, including chiral topological order, can be prepared in constant depth or time, and one-dimensional CFT states and non-Abelian topological orders with both solvable and nonsolvable groups can be prepared in depth scaling logarithmically with system size. We also build on a recently discovered correspondence between symmetry-protected topological phases and long-range entanglement to derive efficient protocols for preparing symmetry-enriched topological order and arbitrary Calderbank-Shor-Steane codes. Our work illustrates the practical and conceptual versatility of measurement for state preparation.