Entanglement versus chaos in disordered spin chains

We use a Heisenberg spin-1∕2 chain to investigate how chaos and localization may affect the entanglement of pairs of qubits. To measure how much entangled a pair is, we compute its concurrence, which is then analyzed in the delocalized (localized) and in the chaotic (nonchaotic) regimes. Our results indicate that chaos reduces entanglement and that entanglement decreases in the region of strong localization. In the transition region from a chaotic to a nonchaotic regime localization increases entanglement. We also show that entanglement is larger for strongly interacting qubits (nearest neighbors) than for weakly interacting qubits (next and next-next neighbors).