Discontinuity of Maximum Entropy Inference and Quantum Phase Transitions

Understand

In this paper, we discuss the connection between two genuinely quantum phenomena --- the discontinuity of quantum maximum entropy inference and quantum phase transitions at zero temperature.

• It is shown that the discontinuity of the maximum entropy inference of local observable measurements signals the non-local type of transitions, where local density matrices of the ground state change smoothly at the transition point.
• We then propose to use the quantum conditional mutual information of the ground state as an indicator to detect the discontinuity and the non-local type of quantum phase transitions in the thermodynamic limit.