Negativity as the entanglement measure to probe the Kondo regime in the spin-chain Kondo model

We study the entanglement of an impurity at one end of a spin chain with a block of spins using negativity as a true measure of entanglement to characterize the unique features of the gapless Kondo regime in the spin-chain Kondo model. For this spin chain in the Kondo regime we determine—with a true entanglement measure—the spatial extent of the Kondo screening cloud, we propose an ansatz for its ground state and demonstrate that the impurity spin is indeed maximally entangled with the cloud. To better evidence the peculiarities of the Kondo regime, we carry a parallel analysis of the entanglement properties of the Kondo spin-chain model in the gapped dimerized regime. Our study shows how a genuine entanglement measure stemming from quantum information theory can fully characterize also nonperturbative regimes accessible to certain condensed matter systems. ©2010 The American Physical Society