Emergent criticality in non-unitary random dynamics

In this talk, I will discuss emergent criticality in non-unitary random quantum dynamics. More specifically, I will focus on a class of free fermion random circuit models in one spatial dimension. I will show that after sufficient time evolution, the steady states have logarithmic violations of the entanglement area law and power law

correlation functions. Moreover, starting with a short-range entangled many-body state, the dynamical evolution of entanglement and correlations quantitatively agrees with the predictions of two-dimensional conformal field theory with a space-like time direction. I will argue that this behavior is generic in non-unitary free quantum dynamics with time-dependent randomness, and show that the emergent conformal dynamics of two-point functions arises out of a simple" nonlinear master equation".