Eur. Phys. J. B (2013) 86: 505
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2013-40761-3

Regular Article

Thermal entanglement in a triple quantum dot system

¹ Institute of Molecular Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences, ul. M. Smoluchowskiego 17, 60-179 Poznań, Poland
² Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, University of Ljubljana and Jozef Stefan Institute, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia

^a e-mail: bulka@ifmpan.poznan.pl

Received: 13 August 2013
Received in final form: 13 November 2013
Published online: 11 December 2013

Abstract

We present studies of thermal entanglement of a three-spin system in triangular symmetry. Spin correlations are described within an effective Heisenberg Hamiltonian, derived from the Hubbard Hamiltonian, with super-exchange couplings modulated by an effective electric field. Additionally a homogenous magnetic field is applied to completely break the degeneracy of the system. We show that entanglement is generated in the subspace of doublet states with different pairwise spin correlations for the ground and excited states. For the doublets with the same spin orientation one can observe nonmonotonic temperature dependence of entanglement due to competition between entanglement encoded in the ground state and the excited state. The mixing of the states with an opposite spin orientation or with quadruplets (unentangled states) always monotonically destroys entanglement. Pairwise entanglement is quantified using concurrence for which analytical formulae are derived in various thermal mixing scenarios. The electric field plays a specific role – it breaks the symmetry of the system and changes spin correlations. Rotating the electric field can create maximally entangled qubit pairs together with a separate spin (monogamy) that survives in a relatively wide temperature range providing robust pairwise entanglement generation at elevated temperatures.