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Teleporting an unknown qubit state is a paradigmatic quantum information processing task revealing the advantage of quantum communication protocols over their classical counterpart. For a teleportation protocol using a Bell state as quantum channel, the resource has been identified to be the concurrence. However, for mixed multi-partite states the lack of computable entanglement measures has made the identification of the quantum resource responsible for this advantage more challenging. Here, by building on previous results showing that localizable concurrence is the necessary resource for controlled quantum teleportation, we show that any teleportation protocol using an arbitrary multi-partite state, that includes a Bell measurement, requires a non-vanishing localizable concurrence between two of its parties in order to perform better than the classical protocol. By first analyzing the GHZ channel and GHZ measurement teleportation protocol, in the presence of GHZ-symmetric-preserving noise, we compare different multi-partite entanglement measures with the fidelity of teleportation, and we find that the protocol performs better than the classical protocol when all multi-partite entanglement measures vanish, except for the localizable concurrence. Finally, we extend our proof to an arbitrary teleportation protocol with an arbitrary multi-partite entangled channel., 13 pages, 4 figures. Accepted for publication in International Journal of Quantum Information

The study of quantum thermodynamics, i.e. equilibrium and non-equilibrium thermodynamics of quantum systems, has been applied to various many-body problems, including quantum phase transitions. An important question is whether out-of-equilibrium quantities from this emerging field, such as fluctuations of work, exhibit scaling after a sudden quench. In particular, it is very interesting to explore this problem in impurity models where the lack of an obvious symmetry breaking at criticality makes it very challenging to characterize. Here, by considering a spin emulation of the two impurity Kondo model and performing density matrix renormalization group computations, we establish that the irreversible work produced in a quench exhibits finite-size scaling at quantum criticality. Our approach predicts the equilibrium critical exponents for the crossover length and the order parameter of the model, and, moreover, implies a new exponent for the rescaled irreversible work.

The transfer of excitations between different locations of a quantum many-body system is of primary importance in many research areas, from transport properties in spintronics and atomtronics to quantum state transfer in quantum information processing. We address the transfer of n > 1 bosonic and fermionic excitations between the edges of a one-dimensional chain modelled by a quadratic hopping Hamiltonian, where the block edges, embodying the sender and the receiver sites, are weakly coupled to the quantum wire. We find that perturbative high-quality transfer is attainable in the weak-coupling limit, for both bosons and fermions, only for certain modular arithmetic equivalence classes of the wire's length. Finally we apply our findings to the transport of spins and the charging of a many-body quantum battery., peer-reviewed

We investigate the transfer of genuine multipartite entanglement across a spin-1/2 chain with nearest-neighbor XX-type interaction. We focus on the perturbative regime, where a block of spins is weakly coupled at each edge of a quantum wire, embodying the role of a multiqubit sender and receiver, respectively. We find that high-quality multipartite entanglement transfer is achieved at the same time that three excitations are transferred to the opposite edge of the chain. Moreover, we find that both a finite concurrence and tripartite negativity is attained at much shorter time, making GHZ-distillation protocols feasible. Finally, we investigate the robustness of our protocol with respect to non-perturbative couplings and increasing lengths of the quantum wire., Comment: Comments welcome

In this work we study the single-qubit quantum state transfer in uniform long-range spin XXZ systems in high-dimensional geometries. We consider prototypical long-range spin exchanges that are relevant for experiments in cold atomic platforms: Coulomb, dipolar and van der Waals-like interactions. We find that in all these cases the fidelity increases with the dimensionality of the lattice. This can be related to the emergence of a pair of bilocalized states on the sender and receiver site due to the onset of an effective weak-coupling Hamiltonian. The enhancement of the quantum state transfer fidelity is more pronounced both with the increase of the couplings interaction range and in going from a 1D to a 2D lattice. Finally, we test our predictions in the presence of temperature-induced disorder introducing a model for the thermal displacement of the lattice sites, considered as a set of local adiabatic oscillators., 8 pages, 7 figures

Routing quantum information among different nodes in a network is a fundamental prerequisite for a quantum internet. While single-qubit routing has been largely addressed, many-qubit routing protocols have not been intensively investigated so far. Building on a recently proposed many-excitation transfer protocol, we apply the perturbative transfer scheme to a two-excitation routing protocol on a network where multiple two-receivers block are coupled to a linear chain. We address both the case of switchable and permanent couplings between the receivers and the chain. We find that the protocol allows for efficient two-excitation routing on a fermionic network, although for a spin-12 network only a limited region of the network is suitable for high-quality routing., ;, peer-reviewed

Generating high-quality multi-particle entanglement between communicating parties is the primary resource in quantum teleportation protocols. To this aim, we show that the natural dynamics of a single spin chain is able to sustain the generation of two pairs of Bell states - possibly shared between a sender and a distant receiver - which can in turn enable two-qubit teleportation. In particular, we address a spin-1/2 chain with XX interactions, connecting two pairs of spins located at its boundaries, playing the roles of sender and receiver. In the regime where both end pairs are weakly coupled to the spin chain, it is possible to generate at predefinite times a state that has vanishing infidelity with the product state of two Bell pairs, thereby providing nearly unit fidelity of teleportation. We also derive an effective Hamiltonian via a second-order perturbation approach that faithfully reproduces the dynamics of the full system., 11 pages, 4 figures. Comments welcome

The out-of-equilibrium dynamics of many body systems has recently received a burst of interest, also due to experimental implementations. The dynamics of both observables, such as magnetization and susceptibilities, and quantum information related quantities, such as concurrence and entanglement entropy, have been investigated under different protocols bringing the system out of equilibrium. In this paper we focus on the entanglement entropy dynamics under a sinusoidal drive of the transverse magnetic field in the 1D quantum Ising model. We find that the area and the volume law of the entanglement entropy coexist under periodic drive for an initial non-critical ground state. Furthermore, starting from a critical ground state, the entanglement entropy exhibits finite size scaling even under such a periodic drive. This critical-like behaviour of the out-of-equilibrium driven state can persist for arbitrarily long time, provided that the entanglement entropy is evaluated on increasingly subsystem sizes, whereas for smaller sizes a volume law holds. Finally, we give an interpretation of the simultaneous occurrence of critical and non-critical behaviour in terms of the propagation of Floquet quasi-particles., contribution to the 11th Italian Quantum Information Science conference (IQIS), September 17th-20th, 2018 - Catania, Italy, 4 pages

We study the non-equilibrium evolution of a one-dimensional quantum Ising chain with spatially disordered, time-dependent, transverse fields characterised by white noise correlation dynamics. We establish pre-thermalization in this model, showing that the quench dynamics of the on-site transverse magnetisation first approaches a metastable state unaffected by noise fluctuations, and then relaxes exponentially fast towards an infinite temperature state as a result of the noise. We also consider energy transport in the model, starting from an inhomogeneous state with two domain walls which separate regions characterised by spins with opposite transverse magnetization. We observe at intermediate time scales a phenomenology akin to Anderson localization: energy remains localised within the two domain walls, until the Markovian noise destroys coherence and accordingly disorder-induced localization, allowing the system to relax towards the late stages of its non-equilibrium dynamics. We benchmark our results with the simpler case of a noisy quantum Ising chain without disorder, and we find that the pre-thermal plateau is a generic property of weakly noisy spin chains, while the phenomenon of pre-thermal Anderson localisation is a specific feature arising from the competition of noise and disorder in the real-time transport properties of the system., 6 pages, 3 figures

We study the creation and distribution of entanglement in disordered $XY$-type spin-$1/2$ chains for the paradigmatic case of a single flipped spin prepared on a fully polarized background. The local magnetic field is set to follow a disordered long-range-correlated sequence with power-law spectrum. Depending on the degree of correlations of the disorder, a set of extended modes emerge in the middle of the band yielding an interplay between localization and delocalization. As a consequence, a rich variety of entanglement distribution patterns arises, which we evaluate here through the concurrence between two spins. We show that, even in the presence of disorder, the entanglement wave can be pushed to spread out reaching distant sites and also enhance pairwise entanglement between the initial site and the rest of the chain. We also study the propagation of an initial maximally-entangled state through the chain and show that correlated disorder improves the transmission quite significantly when compared with the uncorrelated counterpart. Our work contributes in designing solid-state devices for quantum information processing in the realistic setting of correlated static disorder., 11 pages, 7 figures

We examine the traversal aspect of ultracold two-level atoms through a high-quality two-photon mazer with squeezed vacuum and coherent field distributions. Here the net cavity potential is constituted by the coherent addition of multiple barriers and well potentials, which is quite different from the potential offered by a cavity in the Fock or vacuum state. For squeezed vacuum and coherent field distributions, one gets different phase times ( t p h ) for different modes of the distribution, which are then averaged by taking the weighted mean on the t p h over the n-dependent transmission probability. It is found that the nature, intensity of the field, and injected coherence of the incident atoms have a decisive role in controlling peak values and sub- and superclassical traversals of the tunneling atoms. For two of the system’s dressed states ( | Φ b 0 ⟩ , | Φ b 1 ⟩ ), the cavity offers reflectionless transmission, as the atoms experience zero potential due to the dark state formation. Moreover, for a somewhat intense cavity field, mazer action (scattering-type behavior) may be obtained for an extended range of energies due to increased cavity potential in the course of atom–cavity interaction.

In this paper we discuss the implementation of 2-qubit quantum state transfer (QST) in inhomogeneous spin chains where the sender and the receiver blocks are coupled through the bulk channel via weak links. The fidelity and the typical timescale of the QST are discussed as a function of the parameters of the weak links. Given the possibility of implementing with cold atoms in optical lattices a variety of condensed matter systems, including spin systems, we also discuss the possible implementation of the discussed 2-qubit QST with cold gases with weak links, together with a discussion of the applications and limitations of the presented results.

We study finite size scaling for the magnetic observables of an impurity residing at the endpoint of an open quantum Ising chain in a transverse magnetic field, realized by locally rescaling the magnetic field by a factor $\mu \neq 1$. In the homogeneous chain limit at $\mu = 1$, we find the expected finite size scaling for the longitudinal impurity magnetization, with no specific scaling for the transverse magnetization. At variance, in the classical impurity limit, $\mu = 0$, we recover finite scaling for the longitudinal magnetization, while the transverse one basically does not scale. For this case, we provide both analytic approximate expressions for the magnetization and the susceptibility as well as numerical evidences for the scaling behavior. At intermediate values of $\mu$, finite size scaling is violated, and we provide a possible explanation of this result in terms of the appearance of a second, impurity related length scale. Finally, on going along the standard quantum-to-classical mapping between statistical models, we derive the classical counterpart of the quantum Ising chain with an impurity at its endpoint as a classical Ising model on a square lattice wrapped on a half-infinite cylinder, with the links along the first circle modified as a function of $\mu$.

We study the generation and propagation of local perturbations in a quantum many-body spin system. In particular, we study the Ising model in transverse field in the presence of a local field defect at one edge. This system possesses a rich phase diagram with different regions characterized by the presence of one or two Majorana zero modes. We show that their localized character {\it i}) enables a characterization of the Ising phase transition through a local-only measurement performed on the edge spin, and {\it ii}) strongly affects the propagation of quasiparticles emitted after the sudden removal of the defect, so that the dynamics of the local magnetization show clear deviations from a ballistic behavior in presence of the Majorana fermions., comments welcome

The emerging field of quantum thermodynamics is contributing important results and insights into archetypal many-body problems, including quantum phase transitions. Still, the question whether out-of-equilibrium quantities, such as fluctuations of work, exhibit critical scaling after a sudden quench in a closed system has remained elusive. Here, we take a novel approach to the problem by studying a quench across an impurity quantum critical point. By performing density matrix renormalization group computations on the two-impurity Kondo model, we are able to establish that the irreversible work produced in a quench exhibits finite-size scaling at quantum criticality. This scaling faithfully predicts the equilibrium critical exponents for the crossover length and the order parameter of the model, and, moreover, implies a new exponent for the rescaled irreversible work. By connecting the irreversible work to the two-impurity spin correlation function, our findings can be tested experimentally., 6 pages, 4 figures

We numerically study the dynamics of entanglement entropy, induced by an oscillating time periodic driving of the transverse field, h(t), of a one-dimensional quantum Ising chain. We consider several realizations of h(t), and we find a number of results in analogy with entanglement entropy dynamics induced by a sudden quantum quench. After short-time relaxation, the dynamics of entanglement entropy synchronises with h(t), displaying an oscillatory behaviour at the frequency of the driving. Synchronisation in the dynamics of entanglement entropy, is spoiled by the appearance of quasi-revivals which fade out in the thermodynamic limit, and which we interpret using a quasi-particle picture adapted to periodic drivings. Taking the time-average of the entanglement entropy in the synchronised regime, we find that it obeys a volume law scaling with the subsystem's size. Such result is reminiscent of a thermal state or of a Generalised Gibbs ensemble of a quenched Ising chain, although the system does not heat up towards infinite temperature as a consequence of the integrability of the model., 6 pages, 3 figures

We consider a coupled-cavity array, where each cavity interacts with an atom under the rotating-wave approximation. For a staggered pattern of inter-cavity couplings, a pair of field normal modes each bi-localized at the two array ends arise. A rich structure of dynamical regimes can hence be addressed depending on which resonance condition between the atom and field modes is set. We show that this can be harnessed to carry out high-fidelity quantum-state transfer (QST) of photonic, atomic or polaritonic states. Moreover, by partitioning the array into coupled modules of smaller length, the QST time can be substantially shortened without significantly affecting the fidelity., 12 pages, 8 figures

We discuss the thermodynamics of closed quantum systems driven out of equilibrium by a change in a control parameter and undergoing a unitary process. We compare the work actually done on the system with the one that would be performed along ideal adiabatic and isothermal transformations. The comparison with the latter leads to the introduction of irreversible work, while that with the former leads to the introduction of inner friction. We show that these two quantities can be treated on an equal footing, as both can be linked with the heat exchanged in thermalization processes and both can be expressed as relative entropies. Furthermore, we show that a specific fluctuation relation for the entropy production associated with the inner friction exists, which allows the inner friction to be written in terms of its cumulants., All the authors acknowledge support from COST MP1209 Action. F. P., G. F., and N. L. G. acknowledge insightful discussions with Michele Campisi, John Goold, and Mauro Paternostro. T. J. G. A. is supported by the European Commission, the European Social Fund, and the Region Calabria through the program POR Calabria FSE 2007-2013-Asse IV Capitale Umano-Obiettivo Operativo M2. F. G. and R. Z. acknowledge MINECO, CSIC, the EU commission, UIB and FEDER funding under Grants FIS2011-23526 (TIQS), postdoctoral JAE program (ESF) and Invited professors program.

The authors are indebted to T. S. Batalhao, J. Goold, R. Serra, and Peter Talkner for invaluable discussions., We analyze the nature of the statistics of the work done on or by a quantum many-body system brought out of equilibrium. We show that, for the sudden quench and for an initial state that commutes with the initial Hamiltonian, it is possible to retrieve the whole nonequilibrium thermodynamics via single projective measurements of observables. We highlight, in a physically clear way, the qualitative implications for the statistics of work coming from considering processes described by operators that either commute or do not commute with the unperturbed Hamiltonian of a given system. We consider a quantum many-body system and derive an expression that allows us to give a physical interpretation, for a thermal initial state, to all of the cumulants of the work in the case of quenched operators commuting with the unperturbed Hamiltonian. In the commuting case, the observables that we need to measure have an intuitive physical meaning. Conversely, in the noncommuting case, we show that, although it is possible to operate fully within the single-measurement framework irrespectively of the size of the quench, some difficulties are faced in providing a clear-cut physical interpretation to the cumulants. This circumstance makes the study of the physics of the system nontrivial and highlights the nonintuitive phenomenology of the emergence of thermodynamics from the fully quantum microscopic description. We illustrate our ideas with the example of the Ising model in a transverse field showing the interesting behavior of the high-order statistical moments of the work distribution for a generic thermal state and linking them to the critical nature of the model itself., This work has been supported by a PERFEST grant (L. F.) from Universita degli Studi di Palermo, the Marie Curie Action, the UK EPSRC (EP/G004579/1 and EP/ L005026/1), the John Templeton Foundation (Grant ID 43467), the EU Collaborative Project TherMiQ (Grant Agreement No. 618074), and by a Marie Curie Intra European Fellowship within the 7th European Community Framework Programme through the project NeQuFlux Grant No. 623085 (M. C.). T. J. G. A. is supported by the European Commission, the European Social Fund, and the Region Calabria through the program POR Calabria FSE 2007-2013-Asse IV Capitale Umano-Obiettivo Operativo M2. A. X. acknowledges funding from the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851. Part of this work was supported by the COST Action MP1209 “Thermodynamics in the Quantum Regime.”, peer-reviewed

We study the competing effects of simultaneous Markovian and non-Markovian decoherence mechanisms acting on a single spin. We show the existence of a threshold in the relative strength of such mechanisms above which the spin dynamics becomes fully Markovian, as revealed by the use of several non-Markovianity measures. We identify a measure-dependent nested structure of such thresholds, hinting at a causality relationship among the various non-Markovianity witnesses used in our analysis. Our considerations are then used to argue the unavoidably non-Markovian evolution of a single-electron quantum dot exposed to both intrinsic and Markovian technical noise, the latter of arbitrary strength.

Spin chains are promising media for short-haul quantum communication. Their usefulness is manifested in all those situations where stationary information carriers are involved. In the majority of the communication schemes relying on quantum spin chains, the latter are assumed to be finite in length, with well addressable end-chain spins. In this paper we propose that such configuration could actually be achieved by a mechanism that is able to effectively cut a spin ring through the insertion of bond defects. We then show how suitable physical quantities can be identified as figures of merit for the effectiveness of the cut. We find that, even for modest strengths of the bond defect, a ring is effectively cut at the defect site. In turn, this has important effects on the amount of correlations shared by the spins across the resulting chain, which we study by means of a scattering-based mechanism of a clear physical interpretation., 7 pages; revised version, jour. ref. added

Efficient quantum-state transfer is achieved in a uniformly coupled spin-1/2 chain, with open boundaries, by application of local magnetic fields on the second and last-but-one spins, respectively. These effective barriers induce the appearance of two eigenstates, bilocalized at the edges of the chain, which allow a high-quality transfer also at relatively long distances. The same mechanism may be used to send an entire e-bit (e.g., an entangled qubit pair) from one to the other end of the chain. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.87.042313

Two different models for performing efficiently routing of a quantum state are presented. Both cases involve an XX spin chain working as data bus and additional spins that play the role of sender and receivers, one of which is selected to be the target of the quantum state transmission protocol via a coherent quantum coupling mechanism making use of local/global magnetic fields. Quantum routing is achieved, in the first of the models considered, by weakly coupling the sender and the receiver to the data bus. In the second model, strong magnetic fields acting on additional spins located between the sender/receiver and the data bus allow us to perform high fidelity routing., added references in v2

Some of the recent developments concerning the propagation of quantum correlations across spin channels are reviewed. In particular, we focus on the improvement of the transport efficiency obtained by the manipulation of few energy parameters (either end-bond strengths or local magnetic fields) near the sending and receiving sites. We give a physically insightful description of various such schemes and discuss the transfer of both entanglement and of quantum discord., Comment: Review submitted to Int. J. Mod. Phys. B, special issue "Classical Vs Quantum correlations in composite systems", edited by L. Amico, S. Bose, V. Korepin and V. Vedral

Quantum-state transfer with fidelity higher than 0.99 can be achieved in the ballistic regime of an arbitrarily long one-dimensional chain with uniform nearest-neighbor interaction, except for the two pairs of mirror symmetric extremal bonds, say x (first and last) and y (second and last-but-one). These have to be roughly tuned to suitable values x ~ 2 N^{-1/3} and y ~ 2^{3/4} N^{-1/6}, N being the chain length. The general framework can describe the end-to-end response in different models, such as fermion or boson hopping models and XX spin chains., Comment: 12 pages, 11 figures, 1 table

We study the transport of quantum correlations across a chain of interacting spin-1/2 particles. As a quantitative figure of merit, we choose a symmetric version of quantum discord and compare it with the transported entanglement, addressing various operating regimes of the spin medium. Discord turns out to be better transported for a wide range of working points and initial conditions of the system. We relate this behavior to the efficiency of propagation of a single excitation across the spin chain. Moreover, we point out the role played by a magnetic field in the dynamics of discord in the effective channel embodied by the chain. Our analysis can be interestingly extended to transport processes in more complex networks and the study of non-classical correlations under general quantum channels., 8 pages, 9 figures, RevTeX4

High-quality quantum-state and entanglement transfer can be achieved in an unmodulated spin bus operating in the ballistic regime, which occurs when the endpoint qubits A and B are nonperturbatively coupled to the chain by a suitable exchange interaction j0. Indeed, the transition amplitude characterizing the transfer quality exhibits a maximum for a finite optimal value jopt0(N), where N is the channel length. We show that jopt0(N) scales as N−1/6 for large N and that it ensures a high-quality entanglement transfer even in the limit of arbitrarily long channels, almost independently of the channel initialization. For instance, for any chain length the average quantum-state transmission fidelity exceeds 90% and decreases very little in a broad neighbourhood of jopt0(N). We emphasize that, taking the reverse point of view, should j0 be experimentally constrained, high-quality transfer can still be obtained by adjusting the channel length to its optimal value., peer-reviewed

Using recently proposed measures for non-Markovianity [H. P. Breuer, E. M. Laine, and J. Piilo, Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 103}, 210401 (2009)], we study the dynamics of a qubit coupled to a spin environment via an energy-exchange mechanism. We show the existence of a point, in the parameter space of the system, where the qubit dynamics is effectively Markovian and that such a point separates two regions with completely different dynamical behaviors. Indeed, our study demonstrates that the qubit evolution can in principle be tuned from a perfectly forgetful one to a deep non-Markovian regime where the qubit is strongly affected by the dynamical back-action of the environmental spins. By means of quantum process tomography, we provide a complete and intuitive characterization of the qubit channel., 10 pages, 8 figures, RevTeX4

We study the dynamical behavior of two initially entangled qubits, each locally coupled to an environment embodied by an interacting spin chain. We consider energy-exchange qubit-environment couplings resulting in a rich and highly non trivial entanglement dynamics. We obtain exact results for the time-evolution of the concurrence between the two qubits and find that, by tuning the interaction parameters, one can freeze the dynamics of entanglement, therefore inhibiting its relaxation into the spin environments, as well as activate a sudden-death phenomenon. We also discuss the effects of an environmental quantum phase transition on the features of the two-qubit entanglement dynamics., 7 pages and a bit, 7 figures, RevTeX4

It is shown that effective quantum-state and entanglement transfer can be obtained by inducing a coherent dynamics in quantum wires with homogeneous intrawire interactions. This goal is accomplished by tuning the coupling between the wire endpoints and the two qubits there attached, to an optimal value. A general procedure to determine such value is devised, and scaling laws between the optimal coupling and the length of the wire are found. The procedure is implemented in the case of a wire consisting of a spin-1/2 XY chain: results for the time dependence of the quantities which characterize quantum-state and entanglement transfer are found of extremely good quality and almost independent of the wire length. The present approach does not require `ad hoc' engineering of the intrawire interactions nor a specific initial pulse shaping, and can be applied to a vast class of quantum channels., 5 pages, 5 figures

We study the effects of an impurity on the magnetic response and the entanglement properties of the infinite $S=\frac{1}{2}$ $XX$ chain in a transverse field $h$ in its quasi-long-range ordered phase, i.e., below the critical point $h=1$. We show that regardless of the sign of the exchange coupling, and for whatever value of the applied field, the impurity generates an oscillating magnetization that displays a power-law decay with the distance from the impurity itself. This effect sensibly modifies the overall magnetic behavior of the chain, as testified by the observed rounding-off of the divergence of the longitudinal susceptibility. Moreover, the emergence of the above alternating structure in the spin configuration entails a substantial change in the pairwise entanglement distribution along the chain, so that concurrences are found either enhanced (up to a factor larger than 2) or quenched, depending on the distance of the spin pair from the impurity, on its strength, and on the value of the magnetic field. Acting on such control parameters, an adiabatic manipulation of both the magnetic and entanglement properties can be performed. We find these effects robust against thermal fluctuations, and we can therefore suggest realistic setups to experimentally probe the predicted behavior.

We study the ground-state entanglement properties of an XX spin 1/2 chain in transverse field, in its quasi-long-ranged ordered phase, with a magnetic impurity, represented in terms of an additional transverse magnetic field located at one precise site. For such a system, we show that a control of the ground state entanglement can be achieved by acting on the impurity field. To demonstrate this possibility, we evaluate exactly the nearest neighbor and next-nearest neighbor concurrence in the presence of the impurity. It turns out that either an enhancement or a quenching of entanglement between selected spin pairs can be obtained by acting on the intensity of the impurity. For specific values of the magnetic field a spatial modulation of concurrence along the chain is also obtained.

In a ferromagnetic spin chain, the control of the local effective magnetic field allows us to manipulate the static and dynamical properties of entanglement. In particular, the propagation of quantum correlations can be driven to a great extent so as to achieve an entanglement transfer on demand toward a selected site.

The transfer of an unknown quantum state, from a sender to a receiver, is one of the main requirements to perform quantum information processing tasks. In this respect, the state transfer of a single qubit by means of spin chains has been widely discussed, and many protocols aiming at performing this task have been proposed. Nevertheless, the state transfer of more than one qubit has not been properly addressed so far. In this paper, we present a modified version of a recently proposed quantum state transfer protocol [Phys. Rev. A 87, 062309 (2013)] to obtain a quantum channel for the transfer of two qubits. This goal is achieved by exploiting Rabi-like oscillations due to excitations induced by means of strong and localized magnetic fields. We derive exact analytical formulae for the fidelity of the quantum state transfer, and obtain a high-quality transfer for general quantum states as well as for specific classes of states relevant for quantum information processing., Comment: 7 pages

We investigate the influences of quantum many-body effects, such as criticality and the existence of factorisation fields, in the thermodynamic cost of establishing a bonding link between two independent quantum spin chains. We provide a physical interpretation of the behavior of irreversible work spent in such process by linking the phenomenology of such quantities to the properties of the spectrum of the system, 9 pages, 8 figures. Contribution to the FQMT13 special volume

We discuss the effect of a single diagonal defect on both the static and dynamical properties of entanglement in a spin chain. We show that entanglement localizes at the defect and discuss its localization length, arguing that this can be used as a means to store entanglement. We also show that the impurity site can behave as an entanglement mirror and characterize the bouncing process in terms of reflection and transmission coefficients.