  We study the Loschmidt echo (LE) of a coupled system consisting of a central
spin and its surrounding environment described by a general XY spin-chain
model. The quantum dynamics of the LE is shown to be remarkably influenced by
the quantum criticality of the spin chain. In particular, the decaying behavior
of the LE is found to be controlled by the anisotropy parameter of the spin
chain. Furthermore, we show that due to the coupling to the spin chain, the
ground-state Berry phase for the central spin becomes nonanalytical and its
derivative with respect to the magnetic parameter $\lambda$ in spin chain
diverges along the critical line $\lambda=1$, which suggests an alternative
measurement of the quantum criticality of the spin chain.
