Quantum correlation and quantum phase transition in the one-dimensional extended Ising model

Quantum phase transitions can be understood in terms of Landau’s symmetry-breaking theory. Following the discovery of the quantum Hall effect, a new kind of quantum phase can be classified according to topological rather than local order parameters. Both phases coexist for a class of exactly solvable quantum Ising models, for which the ground state energy density corresponds to a loop in a two-dimensional auxiliary space. Motivated by this we study quantum correlations, measured by entanglement and quantum discord, and critical behavior seen in the one-dimensional extended Ising model with short-range interaction. We show that the quantum discord exhibits distinctive behaviors when the system experiences different topological quantum phases denoted by different topological numbers. Quantum discords capability to detect a topological quantum phase transition is more reliable than that of entanglement at both zero and finite temperatures. In addition, by analyzing the divergent behaviors of quantum discord at the critical points, we find that the quantum phase transitions driven by different parameters of the model can also display distinctive critical behaviors, which provides a scheme to detect the topological quantum phase transition in practice.