Entanglement used to identify critical systems

Abstract

We promote use of the geometric entropy formula derived by Holzhey et. al. from conformal field theory, $S_\ell\sim ({c}/{3}) \log(\sin{\pi\ell}/{N})$, to identify critical regions in zero temperature 1D quantum systems. The method is demonstrated on a class of one-dimensional XY and $XYZ$ spin-1/2 chains, where the critical regions and their correponding central charges can be reproduced with quite modest computational efforts.