Spin frustration and fermionic entanglement in an exactly solved hybrid diamond chain with localized Ising spins and mobile electrons

Abstract

The strongly correlated spin-electron system on a diamond chain containing localized Ising spins on its nodal lattice sites and mobile electrons on its interstitial sites is exactly solved in a magnetic field using the transfer-matrix method. We have investigated in detail all available ground states, the magnetization processes, the spin-spin correlation functions around an elementary plaquette, fermionic quantum concurrence, and spin frustration. It is shown that the fermionic entanglement between mobile electrons hopping on interstitial sites and the kinetically induced spin frustration are closely related yet independent phenomena. In the ground state, quantum entanglement only appears within a frustrated unsaturated paramagnetic phase, while thermal fluctuations can promote some degree of quantum entanglement above the nonfrustrated ground states with saturated paramagnetic or classical ferrimagnetic spin arrangements.