The ground entanglement and thermal entanglement in quantum mixed spin chains consisting of two integer spins 1 and two half-integer spins
21 arrayed as $\frac{1}{2}\text{\ensuremath{-}}\frac{1}{2}\text{\ensuremath{-}}1\text{\ensuremath{-}}1$ in a unit cell with antiferromagnetic nearest-neighbor couplings
J1 (J2) between the spins of equal (different) magnitudes are investigated by employing the logarithmic negativity as entanglement measure. The ground entanglement transition found here is closely related to the valence-bond-solid phase transition, and the thermal entanglement near the critical point is calculated and it is shown that two distinct behaviors exist in the nearest-neighbor same kind of spins and different kind of spins, respectively.
We study the entanglement of an impurity at one end of a spin chain with a block of spins using negativity as a true measure of entanglement to characterize the unique features of the gapless Kondo regime in the spin-chain Kondo model. For this spin chain in the Kondo regime we determine---with a true entanglement measure---the spatial extent of the Kondo screening cloud, we propose an ansatz for its ground state and demonstrate that the impurity spin is indeed maximally entangled with the cloud. To better evidence the peculiarities of the Kondo regime, we carry a parallel analysis of the entanglement properties of the Kondo spin-chain model in the gapped dimerized regime. Our study shows how a genuine entanglement measure stemming from quantum information theory can fully characterize also nonperturbative regimes accessible to certain condensed matter systems.
The study is focused on the thermal entanglement of spin chains. Chains consisting of two and three qubits are considered. These chains are considered open because they are coupled to bosonic baths at different temperatures. The baths represent the environment. The dynamics of these open systems are examined as are the effects of different parameters - such as bath temperature - on the entanglement of the spins. The measure of entanglement used in these cases is the concurrence. Comparisons are made between a model that assumes a strong spinspin interaction and one that assumes a weak one. In all these cases, analytical solutions for the system dynamics are presented. It is found that at large times, all systems converge to a state that depends only on bath temperature. It is also found that increases in bath temperatures diminish the entanglement between spins and that at high enough temperatures the entanglement vanishes altogether. The time and temperature dependence of the entanglement is different for the two models that are studied.