Entanglement and quantum phases in the anisotropic ferromagnetic Heisenberg chain in the presence of domain walls

Abstract

We discuss entanglement in the spin-1∕2 anisotropic ferromagnetic Heisenberg chain in the presence of a boundary magnetic field generating domain walls. By increasing the magnetic field, the model undergoes a first-order quantum phase transition from a ferromagnetic to a kink-type phase, which is associated to a jump in the content of entanglement available in the system. Above the critical point, pairwise entanglement is shown to be nonvanishing and independent of the boundary magnetic field for large chains. Based on this result, we provide an analytical expression for the entanglement between arbitrary spins. Moreover, the effects of the quantum domains on the gapless region and for antiferromagnetic anisotropy are numerically analyzed. Finally multiparticle entanglement properties are considered, from which we establish a characterization of the critical anisotropy separating the gapless regime from the kink-type phase.