Effects of spontaneous symmetry break in the origin of non-analytic behavior of entanglement at quantum phase transitions


Abstract in English

We present an example where Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking may effect not only the behavior of the entanglement at Quantum Phase Transitions, but also the origin of the non-analyticity. In particular, in the XXZ model, we study the non analyticities in the concurrence between two spins, which was claimed to be accidental, since it had its origin in the optimization involved in the concurrence definition. We show that when one takes in account the effect of the Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking, even tough the values of the entanglement measure does not change, the origin the the non-analytical behavior changes: it is not due to the optimization process anymore and in this sense it is a natural non-analyticity. This is a much more subtle influence of the Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking not noticed before. However the non-analytical behavior still suggests a second order quantum phase transition and not the first order that occurs and we explain why. We also show that the value of entanglement between one site and the rest of the chain does change when taking into account the Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking.

Download