Thermal Entanglement Between Two Two-Level Atoms in a Two-Photon Jaynes-Cummings Model with an Added Kerr Medium

In this paper, we consider a Hamiltonian model that includes interaction of two coupled two-level atoms with a single-mode quantized electromagnetic field in a cavity via the degenerate two-photon transition. The cavity is filled with a Kerr-like medium and is held at a temperature T. The free field Hamiltonian possesses the su(1,1) symmetry which realized by either even or odd photon-number states. The total number of excitation as a constant of motion, provides a decomposition of the Hilbert space of system into direct sums of invariant subspaces. As a results, the representation of the Hamiltonian becomes block-diagonal matrix with three blocks. After diagonalizing each block, we obtain thermal state of system in the whole Hilbert space and within its excitation subspaces. Finally, the effect of temperature, atom-atom and Kerr-type couplings on the degree of thermal entanglement between the atoms are investigated. Our results show that within the single-excitation subspace spanned with odd photon-number states, the entanglement between the atoms is thermally robust.