Entanglement and level crossings in frustrated ferromagnetic rings

Abstract

We study the entanglement content of a class of mesoscopic tunable magnetic systems. The systems are closed finite spin-1/2 chains with ferromagnetic nearest-neighbor interactions frustrated by antiferromagnetic next-nearest-neighbor interactions. The finite chains display a series of level crossings reflecting the incommensurate physics of the corresponding infinite-size chain. We present dramatic entanglement signatures characterizing these unusual level crossings. We focus on multispin and global measures of entanglement rather than only one-spin or two-spin entanglements. We compare and contrast the information obtained from these measures to that obtained from traditional condensed-matter quantities such as correlation functions. © 2009 The American Physical Society.