Robust thermal quantum correlation and quantum phase transition of spin system on fractal lattices

We investigate the quantum correlation measured by quantum discord (QD) for thermalized ferromagnetic Heisenberg spin systems in one-dimensional chains and on fractal lattices using the decimation renormalization group approach. It is found that the QD between two non-nearest-neighbor end spins exhibits some interesting behaviors which depend on the anisotropic parameter Δ, the temperature T, and the size of system L. With increasing Δ continuously, the QD possesses a cuspate change at Δ = 0 which is a critical point of quantum phase transition (QPT). There presents the “regrowth” tendency of QD with increasing T at Δ < 0, in contrast to the “growth” of QD at Δ > 0. As the size of the system L becomes large, there still exists considerable thermal QD between long-distance end sites in spin chains and on the fractal lattices even at unentangled states, and the long-distance QD can spotlight the presence of QPT. The robustness of QD on the diamond-type hierarchical lattices is stronger than that in spin chains and Koch curves, which indicates that the fractal can affect the behaviors of quantum correlation.