English

System-environmental entanglement in critical spin systems under $ZZ$-decoherence and its relation to strong and weak symmetries

Quantum Physics 2025-09-08 v2 Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics Statistical Mechanics Strongly Correlated Electrons

Abstract

Open quantum many-body systems exhibit nontrivial behavior under decoherence. In particular, system-environmental entanglement (SEE) is one of the efficient quantities for classifying mixed states subject to decoherence. In this work, we investigate the SEE of critical spin chains under nearest-neighbor ZZZZ-decoherence. We numerically show that the SEE exhibits a specific scaling law, in particular, its system-size-independent term (``gg-function'') changes drastically its behavior in the vicinity of phase transition caused by decoherence. For the XXZ model in its gapless regime, a transition diagnosed by strong R\'{e}nyi-2 correlations occurs as the strength of the decoherence increases. We determine the location of the phase transition by investigating the gg-function that exhibits a sharp change in the critical region of the transition. Furthermore, we find that the value of the SEE is twice that of the system under single-site ZZ-decoherence, which was recently studied by conformal field theory. From the viewpoint of R\'{e}nyi-2 Shannon entropy}, which is closely related to the SEE at the maximal decoherence, we clarify the origin of this gg-function behavior.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2501.17481,
  title  = {System-environmental entanglement in critical spin systems under $ZZ$-decoherence and its relation to strong and weak symmetries},
  author = {Yoshihito Kuno and Takahiro Orito and Ikuo Ichinose},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2501.17481},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

21 pages, 8 figures