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Temporal Entanglement Transitions in the Periodically Driven Ising Chain

Karun Gadge1,*, Abhinav Prem2,†, and Rishabh Jha1,‡

  • *Contact author: karun.gadge@uni-goettingen.de
  • †Contact author: aprem@bard.edu
  • ‡Contact author: rishabh.jha@uni-goettingen.de
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Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 100203 – Published 12 March, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/cxq7-q9pd

Abstract

Periodically driven quantum systems can host nonequilibrium phenomena without static analogs, including in their entanglement dynamics. Here, we discover temporal entanglement transitions (TETs) in a Floquet spin chain, which correspond to a quantum phase transition in the spectrum of the entanglement Hamiltonian and are signaled by dynamical spontaneous symmetry breaking. We identify the symmetry principles underlying these transitions: they appear when the driven Hamiltonian preserves global symmetry (here, Z2), the initial state respects this symmetry, and the reduced density matrix carries weight in both subsystem-parity sectors, with TETs occurring precisely when the sector weights become equal (given the previous two conditions are also satisfied). Intriguingly, we find these transitions across a broad range of driving frequencies (from adiabatic to high-frequency regime) and independent of drive details, where they manifest as periodic, sharp entanglement spectrum reorganizations marked by the Schmidt-gap closure, a vanishing entanglement echo, and symmetry-quantum-number flips, while remaining invisible to conventional local observables. At high frequencies, the entanglement Hamiltonian acquires an intrinsic timescale decoupled from the drive period, rendering the transitions genuine steady-state features. Finite-size scaling reveals universal critical behavior with correlation-length exponent ν=1, matching equilibrium Ising universality despite its emergence from purely dynamical mechanisms decoupled from static criticality. Our Letter establishes TETs as novel features in Floquet quantum matter.

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Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 100203– Published 12 March, 2026
  • Received 4 November 2025
  • Accepted 23 February 2026
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