Snapshots—i.e., projective measurements of local degrees of freedom—are the most standard data taken in experiments on quantum simulators, usually to probe local physics. In this Letter we propose a simple protocol to experimentally probe physics of defects with these snapshots. Our protocol relies only on snapshots from the bulk system, without introducing the defect explicitly; as such, the physics of different kinds of defects can be probed using the same dataset. In particular, we demonstrate that, with snapshots of local spin configurations of, for example, the $1d$ Rydberg atom realization of the quantum Ising criticality, we can (1) extract the “defect entropy” and (2) access the continuous line of fixed points of effective defect conformal field theory.

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• Dipolar Rydberg atoms
• Open quantum systems & decoherence
• Quantum phase transitions