Purification of entangled states for two atoms via cavity decay

In this paper a scheme is proposed for the purification of entangledstates for two atoms trapped in two distant cavities via cavitydecay. In the scheme, the atoms have no probability of beingpopulated in the excited state and thus the atomic spontaneousemission is suppressed. This scheme is valid no matter when thecavity decay rate is larger or smaller than the effectiveatom-cavity coupling strength. The fidelity of the final state isnot affected by the imperfection of the photodetectors.