The pair-wise thermal entanglement in a four-qubit Heisenberg XXZ chain is investigated to study the role of anisotropy when an external magnetic field is included. It is found that pair-wise entanglement is absent between nearest- and next-nearest neighbouring qubits with anisotropic parameter Δ⩽−1. For two nearest-neighbouring qubits, increasing the parameter can not only induce the entanglement, but also extend the entanglement region in terms of magnetic field B and temperature T . For two next-nearest-neighbouring qubits, increasing anisotropic parameter can shift the location of the entanglement and control the extent of the entanglement in terms of magnetic field at a finite temperature.
The entanglement resonance in anisotropic spin-1/2 Heisenberg chains of different couplings is investigated when the nearest neighbor coupling is periodically modulated with external magnetic field. When the modulation frequency equals twice of the magnetic field, the entanglement resonance is larger than that at other modulation frequencies and decreases as the number of spins in the chain increases. When the modulation frequency equals the magnetic field, the entanglement resonance can be reduced to a quite low value by varying the coupling along z axis.
The thermal entanglement of a three-qubit Heisenberg chain under a nonuniform magnetic field is studied. It is very interesting to note that the next nearest neighbor entanglement (NNNE) could be larger than the nearest neighbor entanglement (NNE). We analyze the ground state entanglement, and give the conditions that NNNE is larger than NNE near zero temperature. Our results also show that the nonuniform field could induce the entanglement and improve the threshold temperature at certain parameter region.
We consider an infinite one-dimensional anisotropic
XY spin chain with a nearest-neighbor time-dependent Heisenberg coupling
J(t) between the spins in presence of a time-dependent magnetic field
h(t). We discuss a general solution for the system and present an exact solution for particular choice of
J and
h of practical interest. We investigate the dynamics of entanglement for different degrees of anisotropy of the system and at both zero and finite temperatures. We find that the time evolution of entanglement in the system shows nonergodic and critical behavior at zero and finite temperatures and different degrees of anisotropy. The asymptotic behavior of entanglement at the infinite time limit at zero temperature and constant
J and
h depends only the parameter $\ensuremath{\lambda}=J/h$ rather than the individual values of
J and
h for all degrees of anisotropy but changes for nonzero temperature. Furthermore, the asymptotic behavior is very sensitive to the initial values of
J and
h and for particular choices we may create finite asymptotic entanglement regardless of the final values of
J and
h. The persistence of quantum effects in the system as it evolves and as the temperature is raised is studied by monitoring the entanglement. We find that the quantum effects dominate within certain regions of the
kT-$\ensuremath{\lambda}$ space that vary significantly depending on the degree of the anisotropy of the system. Particularly, the quantum effects in the Ising model case persist in the vicinity of both its critical phase transition point and zero temperature as it evolves in time. Moreover, the interplay between the different system parameters to tune and control the entanglement evolution is explored.
The concurrence of two alternate qubits in a four-qubit Heisenberg
XX chain is investigated when a uniform magnetic field
B is included. It is found that there is no thermal entanglement between alternate qubits if
B is close to zero. A magnetic field can induce entanglement in a certain range both for the antiferromagnetic and ferromagnetic cases. Near zero temperature, the entanglement undergoes two sudden changes with increasing value of the magnetic field
B. This is due to the changes in the ground state. This novel property may be used as a quantum entanglement switch. The anisotropy in the system can also induce the entanglement between two alternate qubits.
We study the dynamics of nearest-neighbor entanglement for a one-dimensional spin chain with a nearest-neighbor time-dependent Heisenberg coupling
J(t) between the spins in the presence of a time-dependent external magnetic field
h(t) at zero and finite temperatures. We consider different forms of time dependence for the coupling and magnetic field: exponential, hyperbolic, and periodic. Solving the system numerically, we examined the system-size effect on the entanglement asymptotic value. It was found that, for a small system size, the entanglement starts to fluctuate within a short period of time after applying the time-dependent coupling. The period of time increases as the system size increases and disappears completely as the size goes to infinity. Testing the effect of the transition constant for an exponential or hyperbolic coupling showed a direct impact on the asymptotic value of the entanglement; the larger the constant is, the lower the asymptotic value and the more rapid decay of entanglement are, which confirms the nonergodic character of the system. We also found that, when
J(t) is periodic, the entanglement shows a periodic behavior with the same period, which disappears upon applying periodic magnetic field with the same frequency. Solving the case $J(t)=\ensuremath{\lambda}h(t)$, for constant $\ensuremath{\lambda}$, exactly, we showed that the time evolution and asymptotic value of entanglement are dictated solely by the parameter $\ensuremath{\lambda}=J/h$ rather than the individual values of
J and
h, not only when they are time independent and at zero temperature, but also when they are time dependent but proportional at zero and finite temperatures for all degrees of anisotropy.