Effect of long-range interactions on multipartite entanglement in Heisenberg chains

Abstract

It is well known that the notions of spatial locality are often lost in quantum systems with long-range interactions, as exhibited by the emergence of phases with exotic long-range order and faster propagation of quantum correlations. We demonstrate here that such induced “quasinonlocal” effects do not necessarily translate to growth of global entanglement in the quantum system. By investigating the ground and quenched states of the variable-range, spin-1/2 Heisenberg Hamiltonian, we observe that the genuine multiparty entanglement in the system can either increase or counterintuitively diminish with a growing range of interactions. The behavior is reflective of the underlying phase structure of the quantum system and provides key insights for generation of multipartite entanglement in experimental atomic, molecular, and optical physics where such variable-range interactions have been implemented.