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arXiv:quant-ph/0208114 · Physical Review A

Mediated entanglement and correlations in a star network of interacting spins

A. Hutton, Sougato Bose

Published Apr 16, 2004• 154 citations
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Abstract

We investigate analytically a star network of spins, in which all spins interact exclusively and continuously with a central spin through Heisenberg $XX$ couplings of equal strength. We find that the central spin correlates and entangles the other spins at zero temperature to a degree that depends on the total number of spins. We find that the entanglement mediating capability of the central spin depends on the evenness or oddness of this number. In the limit of an infinite collection of spins, the difference between entanglement and correlations in terms of divisibility among multiple parties is clearly demonstrated. We also show that with a significant probability one can maximally entangle any two noncentral spins by measuring all the other spins (a process related to the recently introduced notion of localizable entanglement). This probability depends on the evenness and oddness of the total number of spins and remains substantial even for an infinite collection of spins. We show how symmetric multiparty states for optimal sharing and splitting of entanglement can be obtained as ground states of this system using a magnetic field. These states can then be mapped on to flying qubits for transmission to distant parties. We discuss a number of advantages of this mode of generation and distribution of entanglement over other standard methods.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.69.042312

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We investigate analytically a star network of spins, in which all spins interact exclusively and continuously with a central spin through Heisenberg XXXXXX couplings of equal strength. We find that the central spin correlates and entangles the other spins at zero temperature to a degree that depends on the total number of spins. We find that the entanglement mediating capability of the central spin depends on the evenness or oddness of this number. In the limit of an infinite collection of spins, the difference between entanglement and correlations in terms of divisibility among multiple parties is clearly demonstrated. We also show that with a significant probability one can maximally entangle any two noncentral spins by measuring all the other spins (a process related to the recently introduced notion of localizable entanglement). This probability depends on the evenness and oddness of the total number of spins and remains substantial even for an infinite collection of spins. We show how symmetric multiparty states for optimal sharing and splitting of entanglement can be obtained as ground states of this system using a magnetic field. These states can then be mapped on to flying qubits for transmission to distant parties. We discuss a number of advantages of this mode of generation and distribution of entanglement over other standard methods.
We compare a star and a ring network of interacting spins in terms of the entanglement they can provide between the nearest and the next to nearest neighbor spins in the ground state. We then investigate whether this entanglement can be optimized by allowing the system to interact through a weighted combination of the star and the ring geometries. We find that such a weighted combination is indeed optimal in certain circumstances for providing the highest entanglement between two chosen spins. The entanglement shows jumps and counterintuitive behavior as the relative weighting of the star and the ring interactions is varied. We give an exact mathematical explanation of the behavior for a five qubit system (four spins in a ring and a central spin) and an intuitive explanation for larger systems. For the case of four spins in a ring plus a central spin, we demonstrate how a four qubit GHZ state can be generated as a simple derivative of the ground state. Our calculations also demonstrate that some of the multi-particle entangled states derivable from the ground state of a star network are sufficiently robust to the presence of nearest neighbor ring interactions.
The spatial distribution of entanglement within a spin-1/2 Heisenberg star composed from a single central spin and three peripheral spins is examined in the presence of an external magnetic field using the Kambe projection method, which allows an exact calculation of the bipartite and tripartite negativity serving as a measure of the bipartite and tripartite entanglement. Apart from a fully separable polarized ground state emergent at high-enough magnetic fields, the spin-1/2 Heisenberg star exhibits at lower magnetic fields three outstanding nonseparable ground states. The first quantum ground state exhibits the bipartite and tripartite entanglement over all possible decompositions of the spin star into any pair or triad of spins, whereby the bipartite and tripartite entanglement between the central and peripheral spins dominates over that between the peripheral spins. The second quantum ground state has a remarkably strong tripartite entanglement between any triad of spins in spite of the lack of bipartite entanglement. The central spin of the spin star is separable from the remaining three peripheral spins within the third quantum ground state, where the peripheral spins are subject to the strongest tripartite entanglement arising from a two-fold degenerate W-state.
We investigate the quantum discord in the thermal states for a spin-star model consisting of three parties which include one central spin and the other two outer spins. Our results imply that the quantum correlation can be established between the two outer spins both of which interacting with the central spin independently. From the analysis, we find that the quantum discord and entanglement depends not only on the external magnetic field and the interaction strength but also on the anisotropy parameter and the temperature. Specially, the quantum discord is more robust than the quantum entanglement in the sense that the quantum discord lasts for higher temperatures than the entanglement does.
We discuss two central spin models coupled, respectively, to a quantum Heisenberg XY spin star environment [1] and to an antiferromagnetic environment [2]. In the first model [1], the exact quantum dynamics of the reduced density matrix of two coupled spin qubits in a quantum Heisenberg XY spin star environment in the thermodynamic limit at arbitrarily finite temperatures is obtained using a novel operator technique. In this approach, the transformed Hamiltonian becomes effectively Jaynes-Cumming like and thus the analysis is also relevant to cavity quantum electrodynamics. This special operator technique is mathematically simple and physically clear, and allows us to treat systems and environments that could all be strongly coupled mutually and internally. To study their entanglement evolution, the concurrence of the reduced density matrix of the two coupled central spins is also obtained exactly. It is shown that the dynamics of the entanglement depends on the initial state of the system and the coupling strength between the two coupled central spins, the thermal temperature of the spin environment and the interaction between the constituents of the spin environment. We also investigate the effect of detuning which in our model can be controlled by the strength of a locally applied external magnetic field. It is found that the detuning has a significant effect on the entanglement generation between the two spin qubits.
Quantum entanglement plays a central role in many quantum communication protocols. It allows distant particles to share correlations beyond the limits of classical interactions. Entanglement is essential for superdense coding, quantum teleportation, and secure cryptographic key distribution in quantum communication. It is also a pillar for developing quantum networks, where the management and distribution of entanglement are crucial for connecting distant nodes. Although perfect entanglement is a sought-after ideal, experimental imperatives, including entanglement distribution over long distances, often limit the quality of entangled states. An important question is whether weaker entanglement still offers advantages. First, we study more general tasks than dense coding to show that simpler measurements, combined with entanglement, allow advantageous and sometimes even optimal qubit communication protocols to be obtained. We also demonstrate that simple measurements can generate quantum correlations that cannot be modelled by two classical communication bits and can constitute an optimal protocol with quantum resources. We implement a novel Bell-type inequality tailored for certifying full network non-locality (FNN) to develop certification methods guaranteeing security on an entanglement-based network. Our experiment uses two pairs of polarised entangled photons in a network configuration with three nodes, briefly referred to as a bilocal network scenario. Finally, we show that weakly entangled states can improve communication over a qubit channel using only separate (local) measurements on isotropic non-steerable two-qubit states, without interference, of individual photons, across two communication tasks: secret sharing and its stochastic variant.
We consider systems of interacting spins and study the entanglement that can be localized, on average, between two separated spins by performing local measurements on the remaining spins. This concept of localizable entanglement (LE) leads naturally to notions like entanglement length and entanglement fluctuations. For both spin-1∕21∕21∕2 and spin-1 systems, we prove that the LE of a pure quantum state can be lower bounded by connected correlation functions. We further propose a scheme, based on matrix-product states and the Monte Carlo method, to efficiently calculate the LE for quantum states of a large number of spins. The virtues of LE are illustrated for various spin models. In particular, characteristic features of a quantum phase transition such as a diverging entanglement length can be observed. We also give examples for pure quantum states exhibiting a diverging entanglement length but finite correlation length. We have numerical evidence that the ground state of the antiferromagnetic spin-1 Heisenberg chain can serve as a perfect quantum channel. Furthermore, we apply the numerical method to mixed states and study the entanglement as a function of temperature.