Unconventional thermal and magnetic-field-driven changes of a bipartite entanglement of a mixed spin-(1/2,$S$) Heisenberg dimer with an uniaxial single-ion anisotropy

TL;DR

This paper investigates how magnetic fields, spin size, and anisotropy influence quantum entanglement in mixed spin-(1/2,S) Heisenberg dimers, revealing unconventional behaviors and phase transitions.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed analysis of entanglement behavior in mixed spin dimers considering anisotropy and magnetic fields, highlighting novel entanglement enhancement mechanisms.

Findings

Antiferromagnetic dimers show higher entanglement than ferromagnetic ones.

Increasing spin S and easy-plane anisotropy enhance entanglement and thermal stability.

Magnetic field causes oscillations and discontinuous phase transitions in entanglement.

Abstract

The concept of negativity is adapted in order to explore the quantum and thermal entanglement of the mixed spin-(1/2,$S$) Heisenberg dimers in presence of an external magnetic field. The mutual interplay between the spin size $S$, XXZ exchange and uniaxial single-ion anisotropy is thoroughly examined with a goal to tune the degree and thermal stability of the pairwise entanglement. It turns out that the antiferromagnetic spin-(1/2,$S$) Heisenberg dimers exhibit higher degree of entanglement and higher threshold temperature in comparison with their ferromagnetic counterparts when assuming the same set of model parameters. The increasing spin magnitude $S$ accompanied with an easy-plane uniaxial single-ion anisotropy can enhance not only the thermal stability but simultaneously the degree of entanglement. It is additionally shown that the further enhancement of a bipartite entanglement can be achieved in the mixed spin-(1/2,$S$) Heisenberg dimers, involving half-odd-integer spins $S$. Under this condition the thermal negativity saturates at low-enough temperatures in its maximal value regardless of the magnitude of half-odd-integer spin $S$. The magnetic field induces consecutive discontinuous phase transitions in the mixed spin-(1/2,$S$) Heisenberg dimers with $S\!>\!1$, which are manifested in a surprising oscillating magnetic-field dependence of the negativity observed at low enough temperature.