Universal scaling relationship between classical and quantum correlations in critical quantum spin chains

Abstract

We numerically investigate classical and quantum correlations in one-dimensional quantum critical systems. The infinite matrix product state (iMPS) representation is employed in order to consider an infinite-size spin chain. By using the infinite time-evolving block decimation algorithm, iMPS ground state wave functions are obtained at critical points for the transverse-field spin-$1/2$ XY model. From the ground state wave functions, we calculate classical and quantum correlations and mutual information. All of the correlations are found to exhibit a power-law decay with the increments of the lattice distance for both the transition lines of the Ising universality class and the Gaussian universality class. Such power-law scaling behaviors of the correlations manifest the existence of diversing correlation lengths, which means scale invariance. The critical features of the correlations can be characterized by introducing a critical exponent of the power-law decaying correlations. Similar to the critical exponent $\eta$ of the spin-spin correlation for the universality classes in the transverse-field XY model, we calculate the critical exponents of the two-spin classical and quantum correlations as well as that of the corresponding mutual information. All of the correlations have the same critical exponents, i.e., $\eta^{I}=\eta^{C}=\eta^{D}$ at a critical point, where the superscripts $I$, $C$, and $D$ stand for mutual information, classical correlation, and quantum correlation, respectively. Furthermore, the critical exponent $\eta$ of the spin-spin correlation is shown to relate to $\eta = \eta^\alpha/2$ with $\alpha \in \{ I, C, D\}$.