Entanglement in shape phase transitions of coupled molecular benders

Abstract

We study the entanglement properties of the shape phase transitions between different geometric limits of two coupled equivalent molecular benders modeled with the two-dimensional limit of the vibron model. This system has four possible geometric configurations: linear, cis-bent, trans-bent, and nonplanar. We show how the entanglement, accessed through the calculation of the linear entropy, between benders and between rotational and vibrational degrees of freedom changes sensitively in the critical regions of this two-fluid bosonic model. The numeric calculation is complemented with a variational approach to the ground-state wave function in terms of symmetry-adapted coherent states. © 2014 American Physical Society.