An ansatz to the quantum phase transition in a dissipative two-qubit system

Abstract: By means of a unitary transformation, we propose an ansatz to study quantum phase transitions in the ground state of a two-qubit system interacting with a dissipative reservoir. First, the ground state phase diagram is analyzed in the presence of the Ohmic and sub-Ohmic bath using an analytic ground state wave function which takes into account the competition between intrasite tunneling and intersite correlation. The quantum critical point is determined as the transition point from non-degenerate to degenerate ground state and our calculated critical coupling strength $\alpha_c$ agrees with that from the numerical renormalization group method. Moreover, by computing the entanglement entropy between the qubits and the bath as well as the qubit-qubit correlation function in the ground state, we explore the nature of the quantum phase transition between the delocalized and localized states.