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arXiv:0707.2611 · Physical Review A

Sudden death of entanglement at finite temperature

Asma Al-Qasimi, Daniel F. V. James

Published Jan 31, 2008• 178 citations
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Abstract

We consider the decay of quantum entanglement quantified by the concurrence of a pair of two-level systems, each of which is interacting with a reservoir at finite temperature $T$. For a broad class of initially entangled states, we demonstrate that the system always becomes disentangled in a finite time, i.e., ``entanglement sudden death'' occurs. This class includes all states which previously had been found to have long-lived entanglement in zero-temperature reservoirs. Our general result is illustrated by an example.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.77.012117

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We consider the decay of quantum entanglement quantified by the concurrence of a pair of two-level systems, each of which is interacting with a reservoir at finite temperature TTT. For a broad class of initially entangled states, we demonstrate that the system always becomes disentangled in a finite time, i.e., ``entanglement sudden death'' occurs. This class includes all states which previously had been found to have long-lived entanglement in zero-temperature reservoirs. Our general result is illustrated by an example.
We discuss the evolution of entanglement for a system of two two-level atoms interacting with a common reservoir at finite temperature. The Markovian master equation is used to describe the evolution of entanglement measured by concurrence. The phenomena of sudden birth and sudden death of entanglement are discussed. It is shown that entanglement sudden death is a standard feature when the reservoir has finite temperature. Entanglement sudden birth, which is the result of the collective behaviour of atoms, appears only for a sufficiently small mean number of photons of the reservoir (sufficiently low temperatures), and it gradually diminishes as the temperature increases. The results are illustrated for the system prepared in the Werner state.
This thesis is a theoretical study of entanglement dynamics and its control of qubit-qubit and qubit-qutrit systems. In particular, we focus on the decay of entanglement of quantum states interacting with dissipative environments. Qubit-qubit entanglement may vanish suddenly while interacting with statistically independent vacuum reservoirs. Such finite-time disentanglement is called sudden death of entanglement(ESD). We investigate entanglement sudden death of qubit-qubit and qubit-qutrit systems interacting with statistically independent reservoirs at zero- and finite-temperature. It is shown that for zero-temperature reservoirs, some entangled states exhibit sudden death while others lose their entanglement only after infinite time. Thus, there are two possible routes of entanglement decay, namely sudden death and asymptotic decay. We demonstrate that starting with an initial condition which leads to finite-time disentanglement, we can alter the future course of entanglement by local unitary actions. In other words, it is possible to put the quantum states on other track of decay once they are on a particular route of decay. We show that one can accelerate or delay sudden death. However, there is a critical time such that if local actions are taken before that critical time then sudden death can be delayed to infinity. Any local unitary action taken after that critical time can only accelerate or delay sudden death. In finite-temparature reservoirs, we demonstrate that a whole class of entangled states exhibit sudden death. This conclusion is valid if at least one of the reservoirs is at finite-temperature. However, we show that we can still hasten or delay sudden death by local unitary transformations up to some finite time. We also study sudden death for qubit-qutrit systems. Similar to qubit-qubit systems, some states exhibit sudden death while others do not. However, the process of disentanglement can be effected due to existence of quantum interference between excited levels of qutrit. We show that it is possible to hasten, delay, or avoid sudden death by local unitary actions taken later in time.
We investigate the phenomenon of sudden death of entanglement in a bipartite system subjected to dissipative environments with arbitrary initial pure entangled state between two atoms. We find that in a vacuum reservoir the presence of the state where both atoms are in excited states is a necessary condition for the sudden death of entanglement. Otherwise entanglement remains for an infinite time and decays asymptotically with the decay of individual qubits. For pure 2-qubit entangled states in a thermal environment, we observe that the sudden death of entanglement always happens. The sudden death time of the entangled states is related to the temperature of the reservoir and the initial preparation of the entangled states.
We investigate the time evolution of entanglement of various entangled states of a two-qubit system exposed to either thermal or squeezed reservoirs. We show that, except for the vacuum reservoir, the sudden-death of entanglement always exists in the thermal and squeezed reservoirs. We present explicit expression for the sudden-death time of entanglement for various entangled states. We find that the sudden-death of entanglement results from the portion of the double excitation component in the initial entangled state. In this sense, the maximally entangled states of a two-qubit system that do not have the double excitation component is more robust against the quantum fluctuations of the vacuum reservoir.
We investigate the phenomenon of sudden death of entanglement in a high-dimensional bipartite system subjected to dissipative environments with an arbitrary initial pure entangled state between two fields in the cavities. We find that in a vacuum reservoir, the presence of the state where one or more than one (two) photons in each cavity are present is a necessary condition for the sudden death of entanglement. Otherwise entanglement remains for infinite time and decays asymptotically with the decay of individual qubits. For pure two-qubit entangled states in a thermal environment, we observe that sudden death of entanglement always occurs. The sudden death time of the entangled states is related to the number of photons in the cavities, the temperature of the reservoir and the initial preparation of the entangled states.