Bell Correlations at Ising Quantum Critical Points.

ABSTRACT

When a collection of distant observers share an entangled quantum state, the statistical correlations among their measurements may violate a many-body Bell inequality, demonstrating a nonlocal behavior. Focusing on the Ising model in a transverse field with power-law (1/r^{α}) ferromagnetic interactions, we show that a permutationally invariant Bell inequality based on two-body correlations is violated in the vicinity of the quantum-critical point. This observation, obtained via analytical spin-wave calculations and numerical density-matrix renormalization group computations, is traced back to the squeezing of collective-spin fluctuations generated by quantum-critical correlations. We observe a maximal violation for infinite-range interactions (α=0), namely, when interactions and correlations are themselves permutationally invariant.