Magnetization plateaus and bipartite entanglement of an exactly solved spin-1/2 Ising-Heisenberg orthogonal-dimer chain

Abstract: Spin-1/2 orthogonal-dimer chain composed of regularly alternating Ising and Heisenberg dimers is exactly solved in a presence of the magnetic field by the transfer-matrix method. It is shown that the ground-state phase diagram involves in total six different phases. Besides the ferromagnetic phase with fully polarized spins one encounters the singlet antiferromagnetic and modulated antiferromagnetic phases manifested in zero-temperature magnetization curves as zero magnetization plateau, the frustrated ferrimagnetic and singlet ferrimagnetic phases causing existence of an intermediate one-half magnetization plateau, and finally, the intriguing modulated ferrimagnetic phase with a translationally broken symmetry leading to an unconventional one-quarter magnetization plateau. The quantum character of individual ground states is quantified via the concurrence, which measures a strength of the bipartite entanglement within the pure and mixed states of the Heisenberg dimers at zero as well as nonzero temperatures. The parameter region, where the bipartite entanglement may be in contrast to general expectations reinforced upon increasing of temperature and/or magnetic field, is elucidated.