Entanglement and quantum phase transition in the one-dimensional anisotropic XY model

In this paper the entanglement and quantum phase transition of the anisotropic spin-1/2 XY model are studied by using the quantum renormalization-group method. By solving the renormalization equations, we get the trivial and nontrivial fixed points, which correspond to the phase of the system and the critical point, respectively. The concurrence between two blocks are calculated and it is found that when the number of iterations of the renormalization tends to infinity, the concurrence develops two saturated values that are associated with two different phases, i.e., Ising-like and spin-fluid phases. We also investigate the first derivative of the concurrence and find that there exists nonanalytic behaviors at the quantum critical point, which are directly associated with the divergence of the correlation length. To gain further insight, the scaling behaviors of the system are analyzed and it is shown that the maximum value of the first derivative of the concurrence reaches infinity and the critical point is approached as the size of the system increases.