Sublattice entanglement and quantum phase transitions in antiferromagnetic spin chains

Entanglement of the ground states in the S = 1/2 XXZ chain, dimerized Heisenberg spin chain, two-leg spin ladders as well as S = 1 anisotropic Haldane chain is analysed using the entanglement entropy between a selected sublattice of spins and the rest of the system. In particular, we reveal that quantum phase transition points/boundaries may be identified based on the analysis on the local extreme of this sublattice entanglement entropy, which is illustrated to be superior over the concurrence scenario and may enable us to explore quantum phase transitions in many other systems including higher dimensional ones.