Bound entanglement in the XY model

Abstract

We study the multi-spin entanglement for the 1D anisotropic XY model concentrating on the simplest case of three-spin entanglement. As compared to the pairwise entanglement, three-party quantum correlations have a longer range and they are more robust on increasing the temperature. We find regions of the phase diagram of the system where bound entanglement occurs, both at zero and finite temperature. Bound entanglement in the ground state can be obtained by tuning the magnetic field. Thermal bound entanglement emerges naturally due to the effect of temperature on the free ground state entanglement.