Entanglement dynamics of spatially close bipartite atomic systems in thermal environment

We investigate the entanglement dynamics in a bipartite atomic system subjected to thermal environment with arbitrary initial pure entangled states. We consider the atoms close together and study the effect of temperature of the reservoir and the interatomic distance on the evolution of entanglement for both initially entangled and unentangled states. We find that we can have long time entanglement even in thermal environment.