Exact Solution of a Yang-Baxter Spin-1/2 Chain Model and Quantum Entanglement

Entanglement is believed to be crucial in macroscopic physical systems for understanding the collective quantum phenomena such as quantum phase transitions. We start from and solve exactly a novel Yang-Baxter spin-1/2 chain model with inhomogeneous and anisotropic short-range interactions. For the ground state, we show the behavior of neighboring entanglement in the parameter space and find that the inhomogeneous coupling strengths affect entanglement in a distinctive way from the homogeneous case, but this would not affect the coincidence between entanglement and quantum criticality.