Experimental Quantum Simulation of Entanglement in Many-body Systems

We employ a nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) quantum information processor to simulate the ground state of an XXZ spin chain and measure its NMR analog of entanglement, or pseudo-entanglement. The observed pseudo-entanglement for a small-size system already displays singularity, a signature which is qualitatively similar to that in the thermodynamical limit across quantum phase transitions, including an infinite-order critical point. The experimental results illustrate a successful approach to investigate quantum correlations in many-body systems using quantum simulators.