Multipartite entanglement dynamics and decoherence from a quantum-critical environment

We investigate the entanglement dynamics and decoherence of a multipartite system under an environment which can exhibit a quantum phase transition. Our result implies that the entanglement evolution depends not only on the size of the system and the quantum states of concern but also on the environment. In the sense of the linear entropy to measure decoherence induced by the environment, the decoherence-free subspaces have been identified for our model.     

Entanglement dynamics of coupled qubits and a semi-decoherence free subspace

We study the entanglement dynamics and relaxation properties of a system of two interacting qubits in the cases of (I) two independent bosonic baths and (II) one common bath. We find that in the case (II) the existence of a decoherence-free subspace (DFS) makes entanglement dynamics very rich. We show that when the system is initially in a state with a component in the DFS the relaxation time is surprisingly long, showing the existence of semi-decoherence free subspaces.     

Measurement-induced nonlocality and geometric quantum discord in two SC-charge qubits

By using geometric quantum discord and measurement-induced nonlocality, quantum correlations are investigated for two superconducting (SC) charge qubits that share a large Josephson junction where the field is assumed to be prepared initially in a coherent state. It is found that the difference between measure measurement-induced nonlocality and geometric quantum discord, of the final state of the two SC-charge qubits system which is especial case of X-states, is equal to a constant value. It is found that the quantum correlations and entanglement of the qubits are very sensitive to the mean number of the coherent photons. The entanglement exists in small intervals of death quantum discord and measurement-induced nonlocality. This is further evidence in support of the fact that quantum correlation and entanglement are not synonymous.     

Sudden death time of two-qubit entanglement in a noisy environment

We present a simple equation to predict the sudden death time of two-qubit entanglement in a noisy environment. This result is valid for all two-qubit systems, no matter what kind of noise is considered.     

Effect of dissipation and reservoir temperature on squeezing exchange and emergence of entanglement between two coupled bosonic modes

We study the effect of a thermal reservoir on the squeezing transfer and entanglement between two identical harmonic oscillators, caused by a bilinear coupling of the RWA type. We analyze the evolution of the invariant squeezing coefficients of each mode for arbitrary initially factorized mixed states, as well as the separability coefficient based on Simon's criterion for Gaussian states. We show the importance of initial squeezing for the emergence of entanglement and the existence of critical temperatures above which no squeezing transfer or entanglement are possible.     

Entanglement dynamics and decoherence of two-qutrit states under an XY quantum environment

The time evolution of entanglement and coherence of two-qutrit states under an XY quantum environment which can exhibit a quantum phase transition has been analyzed. From our results, we find that the quantum phase transition can enhance the entanglement decay and coherence loss when the system is weakly coupled to the environment. Furthermore, the effect of the anisotropy parameter and the size of the environment on entanglement dynamics and coherence has also been discussed.     

Robust entanglement

It is common belief among physicists that entangled states of quantum systems lose their coherence rather quickly. The reason is that any interaction with the environment which distinguishes between the entangled sub-systems collapses the quantum state. Here we investigate entangled states of two trapped Ca⁺ ions and observe robust entanglement lasting for more than 20 s.     

Population relaxation effects on entanglement dynamics of the two-qubit spin chains

By analytically solving the master equation, we examine entanglement dynamics of the two-qubit spin system coupled via the XY interaction and in the presence of population relaxation. We found that the entanglement dynamical behaviors are very sensitive to different initialized states. Particularly, for initial states ?=(|01〉〈01|+|10〉〈10|)/2 and ?=(|00〉〈00|+|11〉〈11|)/2, a combination of the XY coupling with the population relaxation can even be used to enhance the entanglement. Moreover, we show that among different initially separable states, ?=|01〉〈01| and ?=|10〉〈10| are more robust in generating pairwise entanglement.     

The effect of stochastic dephasing on the entanglement and coherence of qutrits

By using negativity, we study the effect on the quantum entanglement of 2-qutrit states of stochastic dephasing which obeys the stationary Gauss-Markov process. The linear entropy used to measure coherence loss due to the stochastic dephasing is discussed. With analysis, we find that the time evolution of entanglement and the linear entropy depends not only on the structure of states of concern, but also on the strength of the fluctuations of the random variable in the stochastic process.     

Thermal and phase decoherence effects on entanglement dynamics of the quantum spin systems

Entanglement dynamics of the N-qubit XY model in thermal and dephasing environments are investigated by solving the Lindblad form of the master equation. Analytical solutions for the two-qubit case and numerical solutions for the multi-qubit case are obtained. For the two-qubit case, our results revealed two main features for entanglement evolution from different initial states. First, the thermal reservoir always induces degradation of the entanglement, and the entanglement may undergo sudden death during certain intervals of the evolution time. Second, the dephasing environment induces damped oscillation of the entanglement for initially separable states and mixed states with relative large values of Δ or J; however, it always induces exponentially decay of the entanglement for the initial Bell states. For the multi-qubit case, our results show that the entanglement decreases monotonically as the time evolves for the initial W state, and behaves as damped oscillation for the initial “one-particle” state. Particularly, for system with large number of qubits, the curves of the concurrence C₁₂ with different N are almost overlapped in dephasing environment.     

Multiple System-Decomposition Method for Avoiding Quantum Decoherence

Decomposition of a composite system C into different subsystems, A＋B or D＋ε, may help in avoiding decoherence. For example, the environment-induced decoherence for an A＋B system need not destroy entanglement present in the D＋ε system （A＋B=C=D＋ε）. This new approach opens some questions also in the foundations of the quantum computation theory that might eventually lead to a new model of quantum computation.     

Sudden death and birth of entanglement beyond the Markovian approximation

We investigate the entanglement dynamics of two initially entangled qubits interacting independently with two uncorrelated reservoirs beyond the Markovian approximation. Quite different from the Markovian reservoirs [C.E. López, et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 101 (2008) 080503], we find that entanglement sudden birth (ESB) of the two reservoirs occurs without certain symmetry with respect to the entanglement sudden death (ESD) of the two qubits. A phenomenological interpretation of entanglement revival is also given.     

Impurity-assisted enhancement of entanglement in dissipative environments

We propose a scheme to enhance the entanglement of a dissipative system, and the enhancement is happened during certain intervals of the evolution time. Our method is obtained by introducing one impurity into a Heisenberg XY chain and then solving the Lindblad form of the master equation with different initial states. The dynamics of entanglement reveal that one can significantly enhance the entanglement. This result will be helpful for the generation and transportation of entanglement in real solid-state systems.     

Complete entanglement transfer between light and qubits

Using the two-mode two-photon Jaynes-Cummings model, entanglement transfer between atoms and field is studied. It is found that when the field is in state constructed from the two-mode photon number states |00〉,|11〉 or the two-mode squeezed vacuum states, full entanglement exchange can be attained no matter the atoms are initially in pure or mixed states. These investigations show that CV entangled states can act as perfectly as the entangled number states in entangling initially separable atoms. The two-mode two-photon atom-field interaction also provides a simple way for the quantum teleportation of atomic or field states.     

Dynamical creation of entanglement versus disentanglement in a system of three-level atoms with vacuum-induced coherences

The dynamics of entanglement between three-level atoms coupled to the common vacuum is investigated. We show that the collective effects such as collective damping, dipole-dipole interaction and the cross coupling between orthogonal dipoles, play a crucial role in the process of creation of entanglement. In particular, the additional cross coupling enhances the production of entanglement. For the specific initial states we find that the effect of delayed sudden birth of entanglement, recently invented by Ficek and Tana? [Ficek, R. Tana?, Phys. Rev. A 77 (2008) 054301] in the case of two-level atoms, can also be observed in the system. When the initial state is entangled, the process of spontaneous emission causes destruction of correlations and its disentanglement. We show that the robustness of initial entanglement against the noise can be changed by local operations performed on the state.     

Quantum dynamical phase transition in a system with many-body interactions

Recent experiments, [G.A. Álvarez, E.P. Danieli, P.R. Levstein, H.M. Pastawski, J. Chem. Phys. 124 (2006) 194507], have reported the observation of a quantum dynamical phase transition in the dynamics of a spin swapping gate. In order to explain this result from a microscopic perspective, we introduce a Hamiltonian model of a two level system with many-body interactions with an environment whose excitation dynamics is fully solved within the Keldysh formalism. If a particle starts in one of the states of the isolated system, the return probability oscillates with the Rabi frequency ω₀. For weak interactions with the environment , we find a slower oscillation whose amplitude decays with a rate . However, beyond a finite critical interaction with the environment, , the decay rate becomes . The oscillation period diverges showing a quantum dynamical phase transition to a Quantum Zeno phase consistent with the experimental observations.     

Entanglement dynamics and Bell violation of three-qubit states coupled to an XY spin chain with Dzyaloshinski–Moriya interaction

We investigate the entanglement dynamics and Bell violation of three-qubit quantum states under an environment consisting of an XY spin chain with Dzyaloshinski–Moriya (DM) interaction. From the results, we find that the entanglement dynamics depends not only on the DM interaction, the magnetic field, and the anisotropy parameter but also on the number of the freedom degrees of the environment. The decoherence-free subspaces of our model have been identified and the Bell violation of quantum states is also discussed.     

Spin bath decoherence of quantum entanglement

We study an analytically solvable model for decoherence of a two spin system embedded in a large spin environment. As a measure of entanglement, we evaluate the concurrence for the Bell states (Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen pairs). We find that while for two separate spin baths all four Bell states lose their coherence with the same time dependence, for a common spin bath, two of the states decay faster than the others. We explain this difference by the relative orientation of the individual spins in the pair. We also examine how the Bell inequality is violated in the coherent regime. Both for one bath and two bath cases, we find that while two of the Bell states always obey the inequality, the other two violate the inequality at early times.     

Thermal entanglement of two interacting qubits in a static magnetic field

We study systematically the entanglement of a two-qubit Heisenberg XY model in thermal equilibrium in the presence of an external arbitrarily-directed static magnetic field, thereby generalizing our prior work [G. Lagmago Kamta, A.F. Starace, Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 107901 (2002)]. We show that a magnetic field having a component in the xy-plane containing the spin-spin interaction components produces different entanglement for ferromagnetic (FM) and antiferromagnetic (AFM) couplings. In particular, quantum phase transitions induced by the magnetic field-driven level crossings always occur for the AFM-coupled qubits, but only occur in FM-coupled qubits when the coupling is of Ising type or when the magnetic field has a component perpendicular to the xy-plane. When the magnetic field has a component in the xy-plane, the cut-off temperature above which the entanglement of both the FM- and AFM-coupled qubits vanishes can always be controlled using the magnetic field for any value of the XY coupling anisotropy parameter. Thus, by adjusting the magnetic field, an entangled state of two spins can be produced at any finite temperature. Finally, we find that a higher level of entanglement is achieved when the in-plane component of the magnetic field is parallel to the direction in which the XY exchange coupling is smaller.     

Effect of Quantum Point Contact Measurement on Electron Spin State in Quantum Dots

We study the time evolution of two electron spin states in a double quantum-dot system, which includes a nearby quantum point contact （QPC） as a measurement device. We find that the QPC measurement induced decoherence is in the microsecond timescale. We also find that the enhanced QPC measurement will trap the system in its initial spin states, which is consistent with the quantum Zeno effect.