Effects of Anisotropy on Pair-wise Entanglement of a Four-Qubit Heisenberg

The pair-wise thermal entanglement in a four-qubit Heisenberg XXZ chain is investigated to study the role of anisotropy when an external magnetic field is included. It is found that pair-wise entanglement is absent between nearest- and next-nearest neighbouring qubits with anisotropic parameter Δ ≤ -1. For two nearest-neighbouring qubits, increasing the parameter can not only induce the entanglement, but also extend the entanglement region in terms of magnetic field B and temperature T. For two next-nearest-neighbouring qubits, increasing anisotropic parameter can shift the location of the entanglement and control the extent of the entanglement in terms of magnetic field at a finite temperature.