Transport of entanglement through a Heisenberg-XY spin chain

The entanglement dynamics of spin chains is investigated using Heisenberg-XY spin Hamiltonian dynamics. The various measures of two-qubit entanglement are calculated analytically in the time-evolved state starting from initial states with no entanglement and exactly one pair of maximally entangled qubits. The localizable entanglement between a pair of qubits at the end of chain captures the essential features of entanglement transport across the chain, and it displays the difference between an initial state with no entanglement and an initial state with one pair of maximally-entangled qubits. © 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.