We demonstrate that multipartite entanglement, witnessed by the quantum Fisher information, can characterize topological quantum phase transitions in the spin-
21 toric code model (TCM) on a square lattice with external fields. We show that the quantum Fisher information density of the ground state can be written in terms of the expectation values of gauge-invariant Wilson loops for different sizes of square regions and identify
Z2 topological order by its scaling behavior. Furthermore, we use this multipartite entanglement witness to investigate thermalization and disorder-assisted stabilization of topological order after a quantum quench. Moreover, with an upper bound of the quantum Fisher information, we demonstrate the absence of finite-temperature topological order in the two-dimensional TCM in the thermodynamic limit. Our results provide insights to topological phases, which are robust against external disturbances and are candidates for topologically protected quantum computation.
Multipartite entanglement refers to the simultaneous entanglement between multiple subsystems of a many-body quantum system. While multipartite entanglement can be difficult to quantify analytically, it is known that it can be witnessed through the Quantum Fisher information (QFI), a quantity that can also be related to dynamical Kubo response functions. In this work, we first show that the finite temperature QFI can generally be expressed in terms of a static structure factor of the system, plus a correction that vanishes as
T→0. We argue that this implies that the static structure factor witnesses multipartite entanglement near quantum critical points at temperatures below a characteristic energy scale that is determined by universal properties, up to a non-universal amplitude. Therefore, in systems with a known static structure factor, we can deduce finite temperature scaling of multipartite entanglement and low temperature entanglement depth without knowledge of the full dynamical response function of the system. This is particularly useful to study 1D quantum critical systems in which sub-power-law divergences can dominate entanglement growth, where the conventional scaling theory of the QFI breaks down. The 1D spin-
21 antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model is an important example of such a system, and we show that multipartite entanglement in the Heisenberg chain diverges non-trivially as
∼log(1/T)3/2. We verify these predictions with calculations of the QFI using conformal field theory and matrix product state simulations. Finally we discuss the implications of our results for experiments to probe entanglement in quantum materials, comparing to neutron scattering data in KCuF
3, a material well-described by the Heisenberg chain.
In this work we evaluate quantum Fisher information (QFI) of a two-qubit reduced state in the Ising-XXZ diamond structure at finite temperatures, which is applied to demonstrate quantum criticality and quantum phase transition in this model. Here we adopt the average QFI with respect to the local orthonormal observable bases [Phys. Rev. A. 88, 014,301 (2013)]. The results show that QFI around quantum critical points decreases or increases steeper when the system temperature is relatively lower. Meanwhile the singularity of QFI’ first-derivatives is becoming more and more obvious as the temperature is approaching zero. By the finite-temperature QFI and its scaling relation with temperature, quantum phase transitions can be well detected from the entangled state in ferrimagnetic phase to an unentangled state in ferrimagnetic phase or to an unentangled state in ferromagnetic phase. Moreover it is further found that the two kinds of phase transitions can be distinguished by the different scaling behaviors. It has been proved that QFI has enough capability to characterize quantum phase transition at finite temperature.
Strange metals exemplify highly collective quantum many-body systems that call for new means of characterization, and there is considerable potential for quantum information approaches contributing to the cause. We investigate multipartite entanglement across the quantum phase transition of a Kondo lattice model using the quantum Fisher information (QFI). We show that the QFI associated with the spin components transverse to the order parameter characterizes the destruction of heavy quasiparticles in the Kondo-destroyed magnetic-ordered phase. The physical origin of this observation is elucidated through an analysis of the antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model. We propose to test the results in terms of both unpolarized and polarized inelastic neutron scattering measurements in the ordered part of the heavy fermion phase diagram. Our findings illustrate how different operators of a many-body system can be employed to not only witness multipartite entanglement in different sectors and but also elucidate the overall physics across different parts of the phase diagram.
Identifying and characterizing quantum phases of matter in the presence of long range correlations and/or spatial disorder is, generally, a challenging and relevant task. Here, we study a generalization of the Kiteav chain with variable-range pairing and different site-dependence of the chemical potential, addressing commensurable and incommensurable modulations as well as Anderson disorder. In particular, we analyze multipartite entanglement (ME) in the ground state of the dirty topological wires by studying the scaling of the quantum Fisher information (QFI) with the system's size. For nearest-neighbour pairing the Heisenberg scaling of the QFI is found in one-to-one correspondence with topological phases hosting Majorana modes. For finite-range pairing, we recognize long-range phases by the super-extensive scaling of the QFI and characterize complex lobe-structured phase diagrams. Overall, we observe that ME is robust against finite strengths of spatial inhomogeneity. This work contributes to establish ME as a central quantity to study intriguing aspects of topological systems.
The characterization of entanglement is a central problem for the study of quantum many-body dynamics. Here, we propose the quantum Fisher information (QFI) as a useful tool for the study of multipartite-entanglement dynamics in many-body systems. We illustrate this by considering the regular-to-ergodic transition in the Dicke model---a fully connected spin model showing quantum thermalization above a critical interaction strength. We show that the QFI has a rich dynamical behavior which drastically changes across the transition. In particular, the asymptotic value of the QFI as well as its characteristic timescales witness the transition both through their dependence on the interaction strength and through the scaling with the system size. Since the QFI also sets the ultimate bound for the precision of parameter estimation, it provides a metrological perspective on the characterization of entanglement dynamics in many-body systems. Here, we show that quantum ergodic dynamics allows for a much faster production of metrologically useful states.