Strong-to-Weak Symmetry Breaking Phases in Steady States of Quantum Operations

Abstract

Mixed states can exhibit two distinct kinds of symmetries, either on the level of the individual states (strong symmetry), or only on the level of the ensemble (weak symmetry). Strong symmetries can be spontaneously broken down to weak ones, a mechanism referred to as Strong-to-Weak Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking (SW-SSB). In this work, we first show that maximally mixed symmetric density matrices, which appear, for example, as steady states of symmetric random quantum circuits have SW-SSB when the symmetry is an on-site representation of a compact Lie or finite group. We then show that this can be regarded as an isolated point within an entire SW-SSB phase that is stable to more general quantum operations such as measurements followed by weak postselection. With sufficiently strong postselection, a second-order transition can be driven to a phase where the steady state is strongly symmetric. We provide analytical and numerical results for such SW-SSB phases and their transitions for both abelian $\mathbb{Z}_2$ and non-abelian $S_3$ symmetries in the steady state of Brownian random quantum circuits with measurements. We also show that such continuous SW-SSB transitions are absent in the steady-state of general strongly symmetric, trace-preserving quantum channels (including unital, Brownian, or Lindbladian dynamics) by analyzing the degeneracies of the steady states in the presence of symmetries. Our results demonstrate robust SW-SSB phases and their transitions in the steady states of noisy quantum operations, and provide a framework for realizing various kinds of mixed-state quantum phases based on their symmetries.