Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Steering and Quantum Phase Transition in Spin Chains

We study the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen steering and quantum phase transitions of the transverse Ising and antiferromagnetic XXZ spin-1/2 chains. By making use of steerable weight, we calculate the steerability for the bipartite subsystems of the models. It is shown that steerability vanishes abruptly and its value maintains zero in a region close to the critical point for the Ising chain. This result is quite different from the information provided by entanglement and quantum discord. While for the XXZ chain, steerability increases and reaches maximal at the critical point, indicating the occurrence of quantum phase transition.