Sudden transitions and scaling behavior of geometric quantum correlation for two qubits in quantum critical environments at finite temperature

Abstract

We investigate the phenomenon of sudden transitions in geometric quantum correlation of two qubits in spin chain environments at finite temperature. It is shown that when only one qubit is coupled to the spin environment, the geometric discord exhibits a double sudden transition behavior, which is closely related to the quantum criticality of the spin chain environment. When two qubits are uniformly coupled to a common spin chain environment, the geometric discord is found to display a sudden transition behavior whereby the system transits from pure classical decoherence to pure quantum decoherence. Moreover, an interesting scaling behavior is revealed for the frozen time, and we also present a scheme to prolong the time during which the discord remains constant by applying bang–bang pulses.