Thermal Entanglement of a Three-Qubit Heisenberg Chain with a Nonuniform Magnetic Field

The thermal entanglement of a three-qubit Heisenberg chain under a nonuniform magnetic field is studied. It is very interesting to note that the next nearest neighbor entanglement (NNNE) could be larger than the nearest neighbor entanglement (NNE). We analyze the ground state entanglement, and give the conditions that NNNE is larger than NNE near zero temperature. Our results also show that the nonuniform field could induce the entanglement and improve the threshold temperature at certain parameter region