Brick wall quantum circuits with global fermionic symmetry

We study brick wall quantum circuits enjoying a global fermionic symmetry. The constituent 2-qubit gate, and its fermionic symmetry, derive from a 2-particle scattering matrix in integrable, supersymmetric quantum field theory in 1+1 dimensions. Our 2-qubit gate, as a function of three free parameters, is of so-called free fermionic or matchgate form, allowing us to derive the spectral structure of both the brick wall unitary U_F and its, non-trivial, Hamiltonian limit H_γ in closed form. We find that the fermionic symmetry pins H_γ to a surface of critical points, whereas breaking that symmetry leads to non-trivial topological phases. We briefly explore quench dynamics for this class of circuits.