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We study the ground-state phase diagram of a non-Hermitian cluster-XY spin chain in the language of free fermions. By calculating the second derivative of ground-state energy density and various types of order parameters, we establish the global ground-state phase diagram of the model, exhibiting rich quantum phases and corresponding phase transitions. Specially, the results reveal that the non-Hermitian cluster-XY model contains five different phases and two critical regions, i.e., ferromagnetic (FM), antiferromagnetic (AFM), symmetry-protected topological (SPT), paramagnetic (PM), Luttinger liquid-like phase, as well as critical region I and II. The order parameters and critical behaviors are investigated and the correctness of the theory is confirmed.

Entanglement asymmetry is a quantity recently introduced to measure how much a symmetry is broken in a part of an extended quantum system. It has been employed to analyze the non-equilibrium dynamics of a broken symmetry after a global quantum quench with a Hamiltonian that preserves it. In this work, we carry out a comprehensive analysis of the entanglement asymmetry at equilibrium taking the ground state of the XY spin chain, which breaks the $U(1)$ particle number symmetry, and provide a physical interpretation of it in terms of superconducting Cooper pairs. We also consider quenches from this ground state to the XX spin chain, which preserves the broken $U(1)$ symmetry. In this case, the entanglement asymmetry reveals that the more the symmetry is initially broken, the faster it may be restored in a subsystem, a surprising and counter-intuitive phenomenon that is a type of a quantum Mpemba effect. We obtain a quasi-particle picture for the entanglement asymmetry in terms of Cooper pairs, from which we derive the microscopic conditions to observe the quantum Mpemba effect in this system, giving further support to the criteria recently proposed for arbitrary integrable quantum systems. In addition, we find that the power law governing symmetry restoration depends discontinuously on whether the initial state is critical or not, leading to new forms of strong and weak Mpemba effects., Comment: 30 pages, 8 figures

We introduce and formulate the boundary condition twisted by the energy (time translation) in one-dimensional quantum many-body systems. The stiffness against this boundary condition quantifies thermal analogues of the Drude weight and the Meissner stiffness. We apply this formalism to the one-dimensional quantum XY spin chain and estimate the thermal Meissner stiffness., Comment: Proceedings of the 29th International Conference on Low Temperature Physics (LT29)

The transverse-field $XY$ spin chain with competing antiferromagnetic long-range interactions, $J_r \propto 1/r^\alpha$ ($r$: distance between spins), and the exponent $\alpha$ was investigated numerically. The main concern is to clarify the character of the transverse-field-driven phase transition for the small-$\alpha$ regime around the $XX$-symmetric point, $\eta=0$ ($\eta$: $XY$-anisotropy parameter). To cope with the negative-sign problem, we employed the exact-diagonalization method, which enables us to evaluate the fidelity susceptibility $\chi_F$. Because the fidelity susceptibility does not assume any order parameter after a phase transition, it detects the multi-criticality around the $XX$-symmetric point in a systematic manner. As a preliminary survey, with $\eta=0.5$ and $\alpha=2$ fixed, we made the scaling analysis of $\chi_F$. The scaling behavior of $\chi_F$ shows that the transverse-field-driven phase transition belongs to the 2D-Ising universality class. Thereby, with the properly crossover-scaled $\eta$, the $\chi_F$ data is cast into the crossover scaling formula for the small-$\alpha$ regime. The multi-critical exponents fed into the scaling formula are argued through referring to related studies.

The entanglement asymmetry is a novel quantity that, using entanglement methods, measures how much a symmetry is broken in a part of an extended quantum system. So far it has only been used to characterise the breaking of continuous Abelian symmetries. In this paper, we extend the concept to cyclic $\mathbb{Z}_N$ groups. As an application, we consider the XY spin chain, in which the ground state spontaneously breaks the $\mathbb{Z}_2$ spin parity symmetry in the ferromagnetic phase. We thoroughly investigate the non-equilibrium dynamics of this symmetry after a global quantum quench, generalising known results for the standard order parameter., Comment: 37 pages, 15 figures. Minor corrections and comments added, new figure. Final version published in JSTAT

We study numerically the two-dimensional coherent spectrum (2DCS) of the Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid hosted by the $S=1/2$ XY spin chain. The 2DCS characterizes the system's third order nonlinear magnetic response triggered by three pulses, separated successively by the delay time and the waiting time. It exhibits a photon echo signal resulting from a lensing process of the fractional excitations: A pair of photon-excited fractional excitations, initially moving apart, reverse their direction of motion, and annihilate each other. In the XY chain, the nonlinearity in the dispersion relation of the Jordan-Wigner fermions leads to the dispersion of the fractional excitation wave packets and thereby suppresses lensing. The magnitude of the echo signal decreases exponentially with increasing delay time. The decay rate scales with the temperature $T$ as $T^n$ at low temperature, where $n$ is the leading order of the Jordan-Wigner fermion dispersion, and as $T$ at high temperature. By contrast, as the waiting time increases, the magnitude of the echo signal saturates, reflecting the integrability of the system. Our results illustrate the effectiveness of the 2DCS in detecting subtle dynamical properties of optical excitations in spin chains., Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures

The study of the dynamics of entanglement measures after a quench has become a very active area of research in the last two decades, motivated by the development of experimental techniques. However, exact results in this context are available in only very few cases. In this work, we present the proof of the quasiparticle picture for the dynamics of entanglement entropies for two disjoint blocks in the XY chain after a quantum quench. As a byproduct, we also prove the quasiparticle conjecture for the mutual information in that model. Our calculations generalize those presented in [M. Fagotti, P. Calabrese, Phys. Rev. A 78, 010306 (2008)] to the case where the correlation matrix is a block-Toeplitz matrix, and rely on the multidimensional stationary phase approximation in the scaling limit. We also test the quasiparticle predictions against exact numerical calculations, and find excellent agreement. In the case of three blocks, we show that the tripartite information vanishes when at least two blocks are adjacent., Comment: 23 pages, v2: minor modifications

We theoretically investigate Majorana zero modes emerging in an anisotropic XY spin chain with second neighbor interactions. The spin chain is mathematically equivalent to the Kitaev chain composing of spinless fermions if only nearest-neighbor interactions are considered. Recent studies on the Kitaev chain with long-ranged interactions, have presented coexistence of several Majorana zero modes. Investigating the topological phase diagram of the anisotropic XY spin chain with second neighbor interactions, we find coexistence of several Majorana zero modes similar to the Kitaev chain. However, we confirm that one of zero modes is restricted into a Hilbert subspace. The mode is regarded as a so-called weak zero mode that should exhibit thermodynamical properties different from a (strong) zero mode appearing in the whole Hilbert space. Since the quantum statistics of spin is the same as a hard-core boson, we expect an experimental realization of the weak mode in not only quantum spin materials but also optical lattices for cold atom systems., Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures

We consider the XY spin chain with arbitrary time-dependent magnetic field and anisotropy. We argue that a certain subclass of Gaussian states, called Coherent Ensemble (CE) following [1], provides a natural and unified framework for out-of-equilibrium physics in this model. We show that $all$ correlation functions in the CE can be computed using form factor expansion and expressed in terms of Fredholm determinants. In particular, we present exact out-of-equilibrium expressions in the thermodynamic limit for the previously unknown order parameter one-point function, dynamical two-point function and equal-time three-point function., Comment: 44 pages

We calculate exactly cumulant generating functions (full counting statistics) for the transverse, staggered magnetization and the domain walls at zero temperature for a finite interval of the XY spin chain. In particular, we also derive a universal interpolation formula in the scaling limit for the full counting statistics of the transverse magnetization and the domain walls which is based on the solution of a Painlev\'e V equation. By further determining subleading corrections in a large interval asymptotics, we are able to test the applicability of conformal field theory predictions at criticality. As a byproduct, we also obtain exact results for the probability of formation of ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic domains in both $\sigma^z$ and $\sigma^x$ basis in the ground state. The analysis hinges upon asymptotic expansions of block Toeplitz determinants, for which we formulate and check numerically a new conjecture., Comment: 19 pages, 7 figures. Additional details in the Appendices, references added, typos corrected. Final version published in Phys. Rev. E

In this work, we investigate the quantum phase transition in a non-Hermitian XY spin chain. The phase diagram shows that the critical points of Ising phase transition expand into a critical transition zone after introducing a non-Hermitian effect. By analyzing the non-Hermitian gap and long-range correlation function, one can distinguish different phases by means of different gap features and decay properties of correlation function, a tricky problem in traditional XY model. Furthermore, the results reveal the relationship among different regions of the phase diagram, non-Hermitian energy gap and long-range correlation function., Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures

In this manuscript we investigate the one-dimensional anisotropic XY model with ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic interactions, which gives more interesting phase diagrams and dynamic critical behaviors. By using quantum renormalization-group method, we find that there are three phases in the system: antiferromagnetic Ising phase ordered in "x direction", spin-fluid phase and ferromagnetic Ising phase ordered in "y direction". In order to study the dynamical critical behaviors of the system, two quantum quenching methods are used. In both cases, the concurrence, a measure of entanglement, oscillates periodically over time. We show that the periods are the same and can be used as a new order parameter for quantum phase transitions. For further discussion, we derive the scaling exponent, {\theta}, and correlation length exponent, {\nu}, from the scaling behavior of the evolution period., Comment: 15 pages,6 figures

We introduce effective form factors for one-dimensional lattice fermions with arbitrary phase shifts. We study tau functions defined as series of these form factors. On the one hand we perform the exact summation and present tau functions as Fredholm determinants in the thermodynamic limit. On the other hand simple expressions of form factors allow us to present the corresponding series as integrals of elementary functions. Using this approach we re-derive the asymptotics of static correlation functions of the XY quantum chain at finite temperature.

We calculate exactly the probability to find the ground state of the XY chain in a given spin configuration in the transverse $\sigma^z$-basis. By determining finite-volume corrections to the probabilities for a wide variety of configurations, we obtain the universal Boundary Entropy at the critical point. The latter is a benchmark of the underlying Boundary Conformal Field Theory characterizing each quantum state. To determine the scaling of the probabilities, we prove a theorem that expresses, in a factorized form, the eigenvalues of a sub-matrix of a circulant matrix as functions of the eigenvalues of the original matrix. Finally, the Boundary Entropies are computed by exploiting a generalization of the Euler-MacLaurin formula to non-differentiable functions. It is shown that, in some cases, the spin configuration can flow to a linear superposition of Cardy states. Our methods and tools are rather generic and can be applied to all the periodic quantum chains which map to free-fermionic Hamiltonians., Comment: v2: 17 pages, 5 figures. Minor revisions and clarifications, references added. Accepted for publication in JSTAT

We reconsider the problem of finding $L$ consecutive down spins in the ground state of the XY chain, a quantity known as the Emptiness Formation Probability. Motivated by new developments in the asymptotics of Toeplitz determinants, we show how the crossover between the critical and off-critical behaviour of the Emptiness Formation Probability is exactly described by a $\tau$ function of a Painlev\'e V equation. Following a recent proposal, we also provide a power series expansion for the $\tau$ function in terms of irregular conformal blocks of a Conformal Field Theory with central charge $c=1$. Our results are tested against lattice numerical calculations, showing excellent agreement. We finally rediscuss the free fermion case where the Emptiness Formation Probability is characterized by a Gaussian decay for large $L$., Comment: 25 pages, 9 figures. References and a footnote added

We consider the dynamics of an XY spin chain subjected to an external transverse field which is periodically quenched between two values. By deriving an exact expression of the Floquet Hamiltonian for this out-of-equilibrium protocol with arbitrary driving frequencies, we show how, after an unfolding of the Floquet spectrum, the parameter space of the system is characterized by alternations between local and non-local regions, corresponding respectively to the absence and presence of Floquet resonances. The boundary lines between regions are obtained analytically from avoided crossings in the Floquet quasi-energies and are observable as phase transitions in the synchronized state. The transient behaviour of dynamical averages of local observables similarly undergoes a transition, showing either a rapid convergence towards the synchronized state in the local regime, or a rather slow one exhibiting persistent oscillations in the non-local regime, where explicit decay coefficients are presented., Comment: 26 pages, 50 references, 9 figures, 3 appendices

Recently, along with the development of quantum information, quantum entanglemant became a hot topic of people. Quantum entanglemant is one of the most amazing phenomenon in quantum mechanics that is totally different from classical physics. However, system would interact with environment in the practical quantum information process. The entanglement would be broken. In this paper, we study the disentanglement evolution of three spin qubits in an XY spin-chain environment. The dynamical process of the disentanglement is investigated. We found the exact expression of the coherence factor. We discuss the coherence factor and the parameters, and then we illustrate that the disentanglement of central spins is best enhanced by the quantum critical behavior of the environmental spin chain. Furthermore, a scaling rule is obtained.

We review several aspects of Many-Body Localization-like properties exhibited by the disordered XY chains: localization properties of the energy eigenstates and thermal states, propagation bounds of Lieb-Robinson type, decay of correlation functions, absence of particle transport, bounds on the bipartite entanglement, and bounded entanglement growth under the dynamics. We also prove new results on the absence of energy transport and Fock space localization. All these properties are made accessible to mathematical analysis due to the exact mapping of the XY chain to a system of quasi-free fermions given by the Jordan-Wigner transformation. Motivated by these results we discuss conjectured properties of more general disordered quantum spin and other systems as possible directions for future mathematical research., Comment: Final version, to appear in Annalen der Physik; title modified, introduction expanded, references added, new Lemma 8.1

The time-dynamics of quantum correlations in the quantum transverse anisotropic XY spin chain of infinite length is studied at zero as well as finite temperatures. The evolution occurs due to the instantaneous quenching of the coupling constant between the nearest-neighbor spins of the model, which is either performed within the same phase or across the quantum phase transition point connecting the order-disorder phases of the model. We characterize the time-evolved quantum correlations, entanglement and quantum discord, which exhibit varying behavior depending on the initial state and the quenching scheme. We show that the system is endowed with enhanced bipartite quantum correlations compared to that of the initial state, when quenched from ordered to the deep disordered phase. However, bipartite quantum correlations are almost washed out when the system is quenched from disordered to the ordered phase with the initial state being at the zero-temperature. Moreover, we identify the condition for the occurrence of enhanced bipartite correlations when the system is quenched within the same phase. Finally, we investigate the bipartite quantum correlations when the initial state is a thermal equilibrium state with finite temperature which reveals the effects of thermal fluctuation on the phenomena observed at zero-temperature., Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures

Out-of-equilibrium behavior is explored in the one-dimensional anisotropic $XY$ model. Initially preparing the system in the isotropic $XX$ model with a linearly varying magnetic field to create a domain-wall magnetization profile, dynamics is generated by rapidly changing the exchange interaction anisotropy and external magnetic field. Relaxation to a nonequilibrium steady state is studied analytically at the critical transverse Ising point, where correlation functions may be computed in closed form. For arbitrary values of anisotropy and external field, an effective generalized Gibbs' ensemble is shown to accurately describe observables in the long-time limit. Additionally, we find spatial oscillations in the exponentially decaying, transverse spin-spin correlation functions with wavelength set by the magnetization jump across the initial domain wall. This wavelength depends only weakly on anisotropy and magnetic field in contrast to the current, which is highly dependent on these parameters., Comment: typos corrected, references added

We study an integrable spin chain with three spin interactions and the staggered field ($\lambda$) while the latter is quenched either slowly (in a linear fashion in time ($t$) as $t/\tau$ where $t$ goes from a large negative value to a large positive value and $\tau$ is the inverse rate of quenching) or suddenly. In the process, the system crosses quantum critical points and gapless phases. We address the question whether there exist non-analyticities (known as dynamical phase transitions (DPTs)) in the subsequent real time evolution of the state (reached following the quench) governed by the final time-independent Hamiltonian. In the case of sufficiently slow quenching (when $\tau$ exceeds a critical value $\tau_1$), we show that DPTs, of the form similar to those occurring for quenching across an isolated critical point, can occur even when the system is slowly driven across more than one critical point and gapless phases. More interestingly, in the anisotropic situation we show that DPTs can completely disappear for some values of the anisotropy term ($\gamma$) and $\tau$, thereby establishing the existence of boundaries in the $(\gamma-\tau)$ plane between the DPT and no-DPT regions in both isotropic and anisotropic cases. Our study therefore leads to a unique situation when DPTs may not occur even when an integrable model is slowly ramped across a QCP. On the other hand, considering sudden quenches from an initial value $\lambda_i$ to a final value $\lambda_f$, we show that the condition for the presence of DPTs is governed by relations involving $\lambda_i$, $\lambda_f$ and $\gamma$ and the spin chain must be swept across $\lambda=0$ for DPTs to occur., Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures

We study the decoherence of a coupled quantum system consisting of a central spin and its correlated environment described by a general $XY$ spin-chain model. We make it clear that the evolution of the coherence factor sensitively depends on the initial states of the environment spin-chain. Specially, the dynamical evolution of the coherence factor of the central spin is numerically and analytically investigated in both weak and strong coupling cases for different initial states including thermal equilibrium state. In both weak and strong coupling regimes, the decay of the coherence factor can be approximated by a Gaussian and in the strong coupling regime the coherence factor oscillate rapidly under a Gaussian envelope. The width of the Gaussian decay (envelope) has been studied in details and we explained the origin of the so-called universal regime., Comment: 6 figures

Quantum state transfer along a one-dimensional spin chain has become a fundamental ingredient for quantum communication between distant nodes in a quantum network. We study the average fidelity of quantum state transfer (QST) along a XY spin chain by adjusting the basis identification between the first spin and the last spin. In a proper choice of the basis identification, we find that the QST fidelity depends only on the average parity of the initial state linearly. We propose a simple scheme to adjusting the basis identification to optimize the average fidelity such that it depends linearly on the absolute value of the average parity. In the case that the absolute value of the average parity is $1$ we prove that the fidelity takes the maximum at any time over arbitrary initial state and basis identification., Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures

We report an experimental quantum simulation of unitary dynamics of an XY spin chain with pre-engineered couplings. Using this simulation, we demonstrate the mirror inversion of quantum states, proposed by Albanese et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 230502 (2004)]. The experiment is performed with a 5-qubit dipolar coupled spin system using nuclear magnetic resonance techniques. To perform quantum simulation we make use of the recently proposed unitary operator decomposition algorithm of Ajoy et al. [Phys. Rev. A 85, 030303 (2012)] along with numerical pulse optimization techniques. Further, using mirror inversion, we demonstrate that entangled states can be transferred from one end of the chain to the other end. The simulations are implemented with high experimental fidelity, which implies that these kind of simulations may be possible in larger systems., Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures

We investigate geometric phase (GP) of a qubit symmetrically coupled to a XY spin chain with three-spin interaction in a transverse magnetic field. An analytical expression for the GP is found in the weak coupling limit. It is shown that the GP displays a sharp peak or dip around the quantum phase transition (QPT) point of the spin chain. Without the three-spin interaction, the GP has a peak or dip around the critical point $\lambda=1$. If the three-spin interaction exists, the peak or dip position is obviously shifted away from the original position. This result reveals that the GP may be taken as an observable to detect both the existence and strength of multi-spin interaction in a spin chain., Comment: 15pages, 4 figures

We study the temporal evolution of a central spin-1/2 (qubit) coupled to the environment which is chosen to be a spin-1/2 transverse XY spin chain. We explore the entire phase diagram of the spin-Hamiltonian and investigate the behavior of Loschmidt echo(LE) close to critical and multicritical point(MCP). To achieve this, the qubit is coupled to the spin chain through the anisotropy term as well as one of the interaction terms. Our study reveals that the echo has a faster decay with the system size (in the short time limit) close to a MCP and also the scaling obeyed by the quasiperiod of the collapse and revival of the LE is different in comparison to that close to a QCP. We also show that even when approached along the gapless critical line, the scaling of the LE is determined by the MCP where the energy gap shows a faster decay with the system size. This claim is verified by studying the short-time and also the collapse and revival behavior of the LE at a quasicritical point on the ferromagnetic side of the MCP. We also connect our observation to the decoherence of the central spin., Comment: Accepted for publication in EPJB

We investigate disentanglement dynamics of two coupled qubits and qutrits which interact uniformly to a general XY spin-chain environment with the Dzyaloshinsky-Moriya (DM) interaction. We obtained exact expression of the time evolution operator and analyzed the dynamical process of the decoherence factors. Through explicitly calculating the concurrence and the negativity, we examined disentanglement behaviors of two coupled central spins evolve from different initial pure states, which are found to be nontrivially different from those of the uncorrelated ones, in particular, the enhanced decay of the entanglement induced by quantum criticality of the surrounding environment may be broken by introducing self-Hamiltonian of the central spin system. Moreover, the DM interaction may have different influences on decay of the entanglement depending on the strength of the system-environment coupling, the anisotropy of the environmental spin chain and the intensity of the transverse magnetic field, as well as the explicit form of the initial states of the central spin system., Comment: 16 pages, 10 figures

We study a class of random block operators which appear as effective one-particle Hamiltonians for the anisotropic XY quantum spin chain in an exterior magnetic field given by an array of i.i.d. random variables. For arbitrary non-trivial single-site distribution of the magnetic field, we prove dynamical localization of these operators at non-zero energy., Comment: 27 pages, to appear in Annales Poincar\'e, new Theorem 7.2 added in final version

We consider an infinite one dimensional anisotropic XY spin chain with a nearest neighbor time-dependent Heisenberg coupling J(t) between the spins in presence of a time-dependent magnetic field h(t). We discuss a general solution for the system and present an exact solution for particular choice of J and h of practical interest. We investigate the dynamics of entanglement for different degrees of anisotropy of the system and at both zero and finite temperatures. We find that the time evolution of entanglement in the system show non-ergodic and critical behavior at zero and finite temperatures and different degrees of anisotropy. The asymptotic behavior of entanglement at the infinite time limit at zero temperature and constant J and h depends only the parameter lambda=J/h rather than the individual values of J and h for all degrees of anisotropy but changes for nonzero temperature. Furthermore, the asymptotic behavior is very sensitive to the initial values of J and h and for particular choices we may create finite asymptotic entanglement regardless of the final values of J and h. The persistence of quantum effects in the system as it evolves and as the temperature is raised is studied by monitoring the entanglement. We find that the quantum effects dominates within certain regions of the kT-lambda space that vary significantly depending on the degree of the anisotropy of the system. Particularly, the quantum effects in the Ising model case persists in the vicinity of both its critical phase transition point and zero temperature as it evolves in time. Moreover, the interplay between the different system parameters to tune and control the entanglement evolution is explored., Comment: 33 pages, 17 figures; v3: Grammar errors and typos corrected, Figure 17(b) updated

We provide a class of initial encodings that can be sent with a high fidelity over an unmodulated, linear, XY spin chain. As an example, an average fidelity of ninety-six percent can be obtained using an eleven-spin encoding to transmit a state over a chain containing ten-thousand spins. An analysis of the magnetic field dependence is given, and conditions for field optimization are provided., Comment: Replaced with published version. 8 pages, 5 figures

Toeplitz matrices have applications to different problems of statistical mechanics. Recently they were used for calculation of entanglement entropy in spin chains. We use the Fisher-Hartwig formula to calculate entanglement entropy of large block of spins in the ground state of XY spin chain. We also calculate Renyi entropy and prove that the spectrum of the density matrix of a block of spins is exact geometric sequence [also different eigenvalues are degenerated differently]., Comment: 29 page, 2 figures

Jordan-Wigner transformation and Bogolyubov transformation are the main steps of the diagonalization of Hamiltonian and paly an important role in the statistical mechanics calculations for one-dimensional Heisenberg spin chain model. Many methods can be exploited as a tool to detect quantum phase transition, regions of criticality and scaling behavior in the vicinity of a quantum phase transition, such as geometric phase, fidelity susceptibility, order parameter, and entanglement entropy, which have direct relation with Bogolyubov transformation. We diagonalized the Hamiltonian in XY spin-chain systems with Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions, the results shows that only the energy spectrum but not the coefficients of the Bogolyubov transformation depends on DM interaction. Therefore, the DM interaction may not influence the critical magnetic field of quantum phase transitions and not induce new critical regions in the XY spin model. Moreover, we further prove the ideas by the methods of geometric phases in this model., Comment: 3pages, 0 figures, any comment will welcome

We study the dynamics and the asymptotic behaviors of quantum discord in a one-dimensional XY model coupled through time-dependent nearest-neighbor interactions and in the presence of a time-dependent magnetic field. We find that the time evolution of the nearest-neighbor quantum discord in this system shows non-ergodic behaviors but is asymptotic to its steady value at the long-time limit. The zero-temperature asymptotic behaviors of quantum discord is only determined by the ratio between the coupling parameter and magnetic field, whereas the finite-temperature asymptotic behaviors determined by both of them. These asymptotic behaviors are sensitive not only to the initial values of the coupling parameter and magnetic field, but also to the final values. It is interesting to note that quantum discords are more robust than entanglement against the effect of temperature. We also find particular parameter regimes, where the nearest-neighbor quantum discord is enhanced significantly.

By using the method of density-matrix renormalization-group to solve the different spin-spin correlation functions, the nearest-neighbouring entanglement(NNE) and next-nearest-neighbouring entanglement(NNNE) of one-dimensional alternating Heisenberg XY spin chain is investigated in the presence of alternating nearest neighbour interactions of exchange couplings, external magnetic fields and next-nearest neighbouring interactions. For dimerized ferromagnetic spin chain, NNNE appears only above the critical dimerized interaction, meanwhile, the dimerized interaction effects quantum phase transition point and improves NNNE to a large value. We also study the effect of ferromagnetic or antiferromagnetic next-nearest neighboring (NNN) interactions on the dynamics of NNE and NNNE. The ferromagnetic NNN interaction increases and shrinks NNE below and above critical frustrated interaction respectively, while the antiferromagnetic NNN interaction always decreases NNE. The antiferromagnetic NNN interaction results to a larger value of NNNE in comparison to the case when the NNN interaction is ferromagnetic., Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures,. accepted by Chinese Physics B 2008 11 (in press)

We study the complete phase space and the quench dynamics of an exactly solvable spin chain, the cluster-XY model. In this chain, the cluster term and the XY couplings compete to give a rich phase diagram. The phase diagram is studied by means of the quantum geometric tensor. We study the time evolution of the system after a critical quantum quench using the Loschmidt echo. The structure of the revivals after critical quantum quenches presents a non trivial behavior depending on the phase of the initial state and the critical point., Comment: Some references added. Better looking plots. Some paragraphs were rewritten for readibility

We study the sine-square deformed quantum XY chain with open boundary conditions, in which the interaction strength at the position $x$ in the chain of length $L$ is proportional to the function $f_x = \sin^2 [\pi/L (x-1/2)]$. The model can be mapped onto a free spinless fermion model with site-dependent hopping amplitudes and on-site potentials via the Jordan-Wigner transformation. Although the single-particle eigenstates of this system cannot be obtained in closed form, it is shown that the many-body ground state is identical to that of the uniform XY chain with periodic boundary conditions. This proves a conjecture of Hikihara and Nishino [Hikihara T and Nishino T 2011 {\it Phys. Rev. B} \textbf{83} 060414(R)] based on numerical evidence., Comment: 10 pages

We present a general formulation of Floquet states of periodically time-dependent open Markovian quasi-free fermionic many-body systems in terms of a discrete Lyapunov equation. Illustrating the technique, we analyze periodically kicekd XY spin 1/2 chain which is coupled to a pair of Lindblad reservoirs at its ends. A complex phase diagram is reported with re-entrant phases of long range and exponentially decaying spin-spin correlations as some of the system's parameters are varied. The structure of phase diagram is reproduced in terms of counting non-trivial stationary points of Floquet quasi-particle dispersion relation., Comment: 5 pages in RevTex 4-1, with 3 figures (2 in png and 1 in pdf format) and 1 page of supplementary material