Spacetime duality between sequential and measurement-feedback circuits
Phys. Rev. B 114, 045123 – Published 22 July, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/lh1b-g4w8
Abstract
Two prevalent approaches for preparing long-range entangled quantum states are (i) linear-depth sequential unitary (SU) circuits, which apply local unitary gates sequentially, and (ii) constant-depth measurement-feedback (MF) circuits, which employ midcircuit measurements and conditional feedback based on measurement outcomes. Here we establish that a broad class of SU and MF circuits are dual to each other under a spacetime rotation. We investigate this spacetime duality in the preparation of various long-range entangled states, including GHZ states, topologically ordered states, and fractal symmetry-breaking states. As an illustration, applying a spacetime rotation to a linear-depth SU circuit that implements a noninvertible Kramers-Wannier duality—originally used to prepare a one-dimensional (1D) GHZ state—yields a constant-depth MF circuit that implements a symmetry gauging map, which equivalently prepares the GHZ state. Leveraging this duality, we further propose experimental protocols that require only a constant number of qubits to measure unconventional properties of 1D many-body states. These include (i) measurement of disorder operators, which diagnose the absence of spontaneous symmetry breaking, and (ii) postselection-free detection of measurement-induced long-range order, which emerges in certain symmetry-protected topological phases. We also show that measurement-induced long-range order provides a lower bound for strange correlators, which may be of independent interest.