Frontiers of quantum physics

Abstract:

We investigate the buildup of quasi-long-range order in the XX chain with a transverse magnetic field at finite size. As the field is varied, the ground state of the system displays multiple level crossings producing a sequence of entanglement jumps. Using the partial fidelity and susceptibility, we study the transition to the thermodynamic limit and argue that the topological order can be described in terms of kink-antikink pairs and marked by edge spin entanglement. © 2009 The American Physical Society.

Abstract:

Maxwell's demon was born in 1867 and still thrives in modern physics. He plays important roles in clarifying the connections between two theories: thermodynamics and information. Here the history of the demon and a variety of interesting consequences of the second law of thermodynamics are presented, mainly in quantum mechanics, but also in the theory of gravity. Also highlighted are some of the recent work that explores the role of information, illuminated by Maxwell's demon, in the arena of quantum-information theory. © 2009 The American Physical Society.

Abstract:

We show that if the ground state entanglement exceeds the total entropy of a given system, then this system is in an entangled state. This is a universal entanglement witness that applies to any physical system and yields a temperature below which we are certain to find some entanglement. Our witness is then applied to generic bosonic and fermionic many-body systems to derive the corresponding "critical" temperatures that have a very broad validity. © 2009 World Scientific Publishing Company.

Abstract:

When a multi-qubit state evolves under local unitaries it may obtain a geometric phase, a feature dependent on the geometry of the state projective Hilbert space. A correction term to this geometric phase, in addition to the local subsystem phases, may appear from correlations between the subsystems. We find that this correction term can be characterized completely either by the entanglement or by the classical correlations for several classes of entangled state. States belonging to the former set are W states and their mixtures, while members of the latter set are cluster states, GHZ states and two classes of bound entangled state. We probe the structures of these states more finely using local invariants and suggest that the cause of the entanglement correction is a recently introduced gauge field-like SL(2,)-invariant called twist. © 2009 World Scientific Publishing Company.