Any quantum system inevitably interacts with its natural environment, which can be modeled as a Markovian reservoir consisting of a continuum of electromagnetic field modes. The quantum coherence of qubits in a zero-temperature natural reservoir decays asymptotically, whereas the quantum entanglement of two qubits coupled to such reservoirs may disappear in a finite time. This phenomenon, referred to as entanglement sudden death (ESD), has been simulated with artificially engineered dissipative channels, but ESD induced by natural dissipative channels has not been confirmed. We here present the first demonstration of natural-dissipation-induced ESD for two photonic qubits, each stored in a leaky resonator of a superconducting circuit. The disentanglement dynamics of the two photonic qubits is monitored with two ancilla superconducting qubits, which can be controllably coupled to the corresponding leaky resonators. The techniques developed in our experiment pave the way for experimental exploration of entanglement dynamics in natural environments.
We explore the dynamics of the entanglement in a semiconductor cavity QED containing a quantum well. We show the presence of sudden birth and sudden death for some particular sets of the system parameters.
We study the exact entanglement dynamics of two qubits in a common structured reservoir. We demonstrate that, for certain classes of entangled states, entanglement sudden death occurs, while for certain initially factorized states, entanglement sudden birth takes place. The backaction of the non-Markovian reservoir is responsible for revivals of entanglement after sudden death has occurred, and also for periods of disentanglement following entanglement sudden birth.
We investigate the entanglement evolution of two qubits interacting with a common environment trough an Heisenberg XX mechanism. We reveal the possibility of realizing the phenomenon of entanglement sudden death as well as the entanglement sudden birth acting on the environment. Such analysis is of maximal interest at the light of the large applications that spin systems have in quantum information theory.
We present a scheme to control the entanglement sudden birth and death in cavity quantum electrodynamics system, which consists of two noninteracting atoms each locally interacting with its own vacuum field, by applying and adjusting classical driving fields.
Distillability sudden death and sudden birth in a two-qutrit system under decoherence of finite temperature is studied in detail. By using of the negativity and realignment criterion, it is shown that certain initial prepared free entangled states may become bound entangled or separable states in a finite time. Moreover, initial prepared bound entangled or separable states also may become distillabile entangled states in a finite time.
Recently Song {\it et al}., Phys. Rev. A {\bf 80}, 012331 (2009), have discovered that certain two-qutrit entangled states interacting with multi-local decoherence undergo distillability sudden death whereas their locally equivalent states do not exhibit such behavior. We have found that their basic equation of motion missed some terms and therefore the subsequent calculations and conclusions are not correct/valid except that distillability sudden death may occur. We provide the missing terms and point out the corrections which must be done in the literature to remove confusion. Moreover, we h…
Using the pseudomode method, we evaluate exactly time-dependent entanglement for two independent qubits, each coupled to a non-Markovian structured environment. Our results suggest a possible way to control entanglement sudden death by modifying the qubit-pseudomode detuning and the spectrum of the reservoirs. Particularly, in environments structured by a model of a density-of-states gap which has two poles, entanglement trapping and prevention of entanglement sudden death occur in the weak-coupling regime.
We study the entanglement dynamics of two cavities interacting with independent reservoirs. Expectedly, we observe that, as the cavity entanglement is depleted, it is transferred to the reservoir degrees of freedom. We find that when the cavity entanglement suddenly disappear, the reservoir entanglement suddenly and necessarily appears. Surprisingly, we show that this {\it entanglement sudden birth} can manifest before, simultaneously, or even after {\it entanglement sudden death}. Finally, we present an explanatory study of other entanglement partitions and of higher dimensional systems.
We investigate entanglement dynamics of two isolated atoms, each in its own Jaynes-Cummings cavity. We show analytically that initial entanglement has an interesting subsequent time evolution, including the so-called sudden death effect.
We investigate the entanglement dynamics of a quantum system consisting of two-level atoms interacting with vacuum or thermal fields with classical driving fields. We find that the entanglement of the system can be improved by adjusting the classical driving field. The influence of the classical field and the purity of the initial state on the entanglement sudden death is also studied. It is shown that the time of entanglement sudden death can be controlled by the classical driving fields. Particularly, the entanglement sudden death phenomenon will disappear if the classical driving fields are…
We demonstrate the difference between local, single-particle dynamics and global dynamics of entangled quantum systems coupled to independent environments. Using an all-optical experimental setup, we show that, while the environment-induced decay of each system is asymptotic, quantum entanglement may suddenly disappear. This "sudden death" constitutes yet another distinct and counter-intuitive trait of entanglement.
The finite time disentanglement or entanglement sudden death, when only one part of the composite system is subjected to a single noise, is examined. While it is shown that entanglement sudden death can occur when a part of the entangled mixed state is subjected to either amplitude noise or phase noise, local action of either of them does not cause entanglement sudden death in pure entangled states. In contrast, depolarizing noise is shown to have an abilitiy to cause sudden death of entanglement even in pure entangled states, when only one part of the state is exposed to it. The result is ill…
Recently it has been discovered that certain two-qutrit entangled states interacting with global and/or multi-local decoherence undergo distillability sudden death (DSD). We investigate this phenomenon for qutrit-qutrit systems interacting with statistically independent zero-temperature reservoirs. We show that certain initially prepared free-entangled states become bound-entangled in a finite time due to the action of Markovian dissipative environment. Moreover, in contrast with local dephasing, simple local unitary transformations can completely avoid distillability sudden death under amplit…
In open quantum systems, entanglement can vanish faster than coherence. This phenomenon is usually called sudden death of entanglement. In this paper sudden death of entanglement is discussed from a geometrical point of view, in the context of two qubits. A classification of possible scenarios is presented, with important known examples classified. Theoretical and experimental construction of other examples is suggested as well as large dimensional and multipartite versions of the effect.
We demonstrate that multipartite Bell-inequality violations can be fully destroyed in finite time in three-qubit systems subject only to the mechanism of local external asymptotic dephasing noise. This broadens the study of local-noise-induced sudden death of nonlocal behavior, extending it beyond the realm of bipartite systems, to which it had previously been restricted.
Sudden death of entanglement is a well-known effect resulting from the finite volume of separable states. We study the case when the observer has a limited measurement capability and analyse the effective entanglement, i.e. entanglement minimized over the output data. We show that in the well defined system of two quantum dots monitored by single electron transistors, one may observe a sudden death of effective entanglement when real, physical entanglement is still alive. For certain measurement setups, this occurs even for initial states for which sudden death of physical entanglement is not …
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. Lopez 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.
We present a constructive argument to demonstrate the universality of the sudden death of entanglement in the case of two non-interacting qubits, each of which generically coupled to independent Markovian environments at zero temperature. Conditions for the occurrence of the abrupt disappearance of entanglement are determined and, most importantly, rigorously shown to be almost always satisfied: Dynamical models for which the sudden death of entanglement does not occur are seen to form a highly idealized zero-measure subset within the set of all possible quantum dynamics.
We study the decoherence of polarization-entangled photon pairs subject to the effects of polarization mode dispersion, the chief polarization decoherence mechanism in optical fibers. We show that fiber propagation reveals an intriguing interplay between the concepts of entanglement sudden death, decoherence-free sub-spaces and non-locality. We define the boundaries in which entanglement-based quantum communications protocols relying on fiber propagation can be applied.
We study the possibility of preventing finite-time disentanglement caused by dissipation by making use of "non-local quantum error correction. This is made in comparison of previous results, where was shown that "local" quantum error correction can delay disentanglement, but can also cause entanglement sudden death when is not originally present.
Dissipation may cause two initially entangled qubits to evolve into a separable state in a finite time. This behavior is called entanglement sudden death (ESD). We study to what extent quantum error correction can combat ESD. We find that in some cases quantum error correction can delay entanglement sudden death but in other cases quantum error correction may cause ESD for states that otherwise do not suffer from it. Our analysis also shows that fidelity may not be the best measure to compare the efficiency of different error correction codes since the fidelity is not directly coupled to a sta…
When a composite quantum state interacts with its surroundings, both quantum coherence of individual particles and quantum entanglement will decay. We have shown that under vacuum noise, i.e., during spontaneous emission, two-qubit entanglement may terminate abruptly in a finite time [T. Yu and J. H. Eberly, \prl {93}, 140404 (2004)], a phenomenon termed entanglement sudden death (ESD). An open issue is the behavior of mixed-state entanglement under the influence of classical noise. In this paper we investigate entanglement sudden death as it arises from the influence of classical phase noise …
The dynamics of entanglement and the phenomenon of entanglement sudden death (ESD) \cite{yu} are discussed in bipartite systems, measured by Wootters Concurrence. Our calculation shows that ESD appears whenever the system is open or closed and is dependent on the initial condition. The relation of the evolution of entanglement and energy transfer between the system and its surroundings is also studied.
We introduce the concept of distillability sudden death, i.e., free entangled states can evolve into non-distillable (bound entangled or separable) states in finite time under local noise. We describe the phenomenon through a specific model of local dephasing noise and compare the behavior of states in terms of the Bures fidelity. Then we propose a few methods to avoid distillability sudden death of states under (general) local dephasing noise, so that free entangled states can be robust against decoherence. Moreover, we find that bound entangled states are unstable in the limit of infinite ti…
The occurrence of entanglement sudden death in the evolution of a bipartite system depends on both the initial state and the channel responsible for the evolution. An extreme case is that of entanglement braking channels, which are channels that acting on only one of the subsystems drives them to full disentanglement regardless of the initial state. In general, one can find certain combinations of initial states and channels acting on one or both subsystems that can result in entanglement sudden death or not. Neither the channel nor the initial state, but their combination, is responsible for …
Entanglement sudden death (ESD), the complete loss of entanglement in finite time, is demonstrated to occur in a class of bipartite states of qu-d-it pairs of any finite dimension d > 2, when prepared in so-called `isotropic states' and subject to multi-local dephasing noise alone. This extends previous results for qubit pairs [T. Yu, J. H. Eberly, Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 140403 (2006)] to all qu-d-it pairs with d > 2.
The origin of disentanglement for two specific sub-classes of $X$-states namely maximally nonlocal mixed states (MNMSs) and maximally entangled mixed states (MEMSs) is investigated analytically for a physical system consisting of two spatially separated qubits interacting with a common vacuum bath. The phenomena of entanglement sudden death (ESD) and the entanglement sudden birth (ESB) are observed, but the characteristics of ESD and ESB are found to be different for the case of two photon coherence and single photon coherence states. The role played by initial coherence for the underlying ent…
We study the entanglement dynamics of strongly driven atoms off-resonantly coupled with cavity fields. We consider conditions characterized not only by the atom-field coupling but also by the atom-field detuning. By studying two different models within the framework of cavity QED, we show that the so-called atomic entanglement sudden death (ESD) always occurs if the atom-field coupling lager than the atom-field detuning, and is independent of the type of initial atomic state.
We investigate the dynamics of entanglement and quantum discord of two qubits in liquid state homonuclear NMR. Applying a phenomenological description for NMR under relaxation process, and taking a group of typical parameters of NMR, we show that when a zero initial state $|00> $ experiences a relaxation process, its entanglement disappears completely after a sequence of so-called sudden deaths and revivals, while the quantum discord retains remarkable values after a sequence of oscillations. That is to say, the quantum discord is more robust than entanglement.
In this paper 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" (ESD) 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 demonstrate the existence of entanglement sudden death (ESD), the complete loss of entanglement in finite time, in qubit-qutrit systems. In particular, ESD is shown to occur in such systems initially prepared in a one-parameter class of entangled mixed states and then subjected to local dephasing noise. Together with previous results, this proves the existence of ESD for some states in all quantum systems for which rigorously defined mixed-state entanglement measures have been identified. We conjecture that ESD exists in all quantum systems prepared in appropriate bipartite states.
he dynamical properties of quantum entanglement in a time-dependent three-level-trapped ion interacting with a laser field are studied in terms of the reduced-density linear entropy considering two specific initial states of the field. Allowing the instantaneous position of the center-of-mass motion of the ion to be explicitly time-dependent, it is shown that either sudden death of entanglement or survivability of quantum entanglement can be obtained with a specific choice of the initial state parameters. The difference in evolution picture corresponding to the multi-quanta processes is discus…
We show that continuous dynamical decoupling can protect a two-qubit entangled state from sudden death at finite temperature due to uncorrelated dephasing, bit flipping, and dissipation. We consider a situation where an entangled state shared between two non-interacting qubits is initially prepared and left evolve under the environmental perturbations and the protection of external fields. To illustrate the protection of the entanglement, we solve numerically a master equation in the Born approximation, considering independent boson fields at the same temperature coupled to the different error…
In this paper, we consider a linear quantum network composed of two distantly separated cavities that are connected via a one-way optical field. When one of the cavity is damped and the other is undamped, the overall cavity state obtains a large amount of entanglement in its quadratures. This entanglement however immediately decays and vanishes in a finite time. That is, entanglement sudden-death occurs. We show that the direct measurement feedback method proposed by Wiseman can avoid this entanglement sudden-death, and further, enhance the entanglement. It is also shown that the entangled sta…
We report results bearing on the behavior of non-local decoherence and its potential for being managed or even controlled. The decoherence process known as entanglement sudden death (ESD) can drive prepared entanglement to zero at the same time that local coherences and fidelity remain non-zero. For a generic ESD-susceptible Bell superposition state, we provide rules restricting the occurrence and timing of ESD, amounting to management tools over a continuous variation of initial conditions. These depend on only three parameters: initial purity, entanglement and excitation. Knowledge or contro…
We investigate the entanglement dynamics and coherence of two two-level atoms interacting with two coherent fields of two spatially separated and dissipative cavities. It is in particular shown that entanglement sudden death is obtained within a short interacting time. However, after a long interaction time a long-lived entanglement is shown, that is, the initial entanglement of two atoms could be partially preserved. In addition, the coherence of the two atoms will not be lost during the evolution.
The dynamical properties of quantum entanglement in two three-level trapped ions interacting with a laser field are studied in terms of the negative eigenvalues of the partial transposition of the density operator. In contrast to the usual belief that destroying the entanglement can be observed due to the environment, it is found that the Stark shift can also produce sudden death of entanglement and long-lived entanglement between the qubits that are prepared initially in separable states or mixed states.
In the present article, the robustness of entanglement in two qubits maximally entangled mixed states (MEME) have been studied under quantum decoherence channels. Here we consider bit flip, phase flip, bit-phase-flip, amplitude damping, phase damping and depolarization channels. To quantify the entanglement, the concurrence has been used as an entanglement measure. During this study interesting results have been found for sudden death and birth of entanglement under bit flip and bit-phase-flip channels. While amplitude damping channel produces entanglement sudden death and does not allow re-bi…
We definitively show, using an explicit and broadly applicable model, that local phase noise that is capable of eliminating state coherence only in the infinite-time limit is capable of eliminating nonlocality in finite time in three two-level systems prepared in the Bell-nonlocal tripartite states of the generic entanglement class.
We analyse the entanglement dynamics in a nonlinear Kerr-like coupler interacting with external environment. Whenever the reservoir is in a thermal vacuum state the entanglement (measured by concurrence for a two-qubit system) exhibits regular oscillations of decreasing amplitude. In contrast, for thermal reservoirs we can observe dark periods in concurrence oscillations (which can be called a "sudden death" of the entanglement) and the entanglement rebuild (which can be named the "sudden birth" of entanglement). We show that these features can be observed when we deal with 2-qubit system as w…
I explore the entanglement dynamics of a three qubit system in an initial X-state undergoing decoherence including the possible exhibition of entanglement sudden death (ESD). To quantify entanglement I utilize negativity measures and make use of appropriate entanglement witnesses. The negativity results are then extended to X-states with an arbitraty number of qubits. I also demonstrate non-standard behavior of the tri-partite negativity entanglement metric, its sudden appearance after some amount of decoherence followed quickly by its disappearance. Finally, I solve for a lower bound on the t…
A new development in the dynamical behavior of elementary quantum systems is the surprising discovery that correlation between two quantum units of information called qubits can be degraded by environmental noise in a way not seen previously in studies of dissipation. This new route for dissipation attacks quantum entanglement, the essential resource for quantum information as well as the central feature in the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen so-called paradox and in discussions of the fate of Schröinger's cat. The effect has been labeled ESD, which stands for early-stage disentanglement or, more freq…
We investigate both theoretically and experimentally the dynamics of entanglement and non-locality for two qubits immersed in a global pure dephasing environment. We demonstrate the existence of a class of states for which entanglement is forever frozen during the dynamics, even if the state of the system does evolve. At the same time non-local correlations, quantified by the violation of the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt (CHSH) inequality, either undergo sudden death or are trapped during the dynamics.
Manipulation of sudden death of entanglement (ESD) of two qubits interacting with statistically uncorrelated thermal reservoirs is investigated. It is shown that for initially prepared X-states of the two qubits a simple (necessary and sufficient) criterion for ESD can be derived with the help of the Peres-Horodecki criterion. This criterion implies that, in contrast to the zero-temperature case, at finite temperature of at least one of the reservoirs all initially prepared two-qubit X-states exhibit ESD. General conditions are derived under which ESD can be hastened, delayed, or averted.
Entanglement sudden death in spatially separated two-mode Gaussian states coupled to local thermal and squeezed thermal baths is studied by mapping the problem to that of the quantum-to-classical transition. Using Simon's criterion concerning the characterisation of classicality in Gaussian states, the time to ESD is calculated by analysing the covariance matrices of the system. The results for the two-mode system at T=0 and T>0 for the two types of bath states are generalised to $n$-modes, and are shown to be similar in nature to the results for the general discrete $n$-qubit system.
I explore entanglement dynamics in a three qubit system comparing the ability of entanglement witnesses to detect tri-partite entanglement to the phenomenon of entanglement sudden death (ESD). Using a system subject to dephasing I invoke entanglement witnesses to detect tri-partite GHZ and W-type entanglement and compare the evolution of their detection capabilites with the evolution of the negativity, bi-partite concurrence, and tri-partite negativity. Interestingly, I find a state in which there is no concurrence or tri-partite negativity but there is entanglement. Finally, I utilize a three…
In open quantum systems, entanglement can vanish faster than coherence. This phenomenon is usually called sudden death of entanglement. In [M. O. Terra Cunha, New J. Phys. 9, 237 (2007)] a geometrical explanation was offered and a classification of all possible scenarios was given. Some classes were exemplified, but it was still an open question whether there were examples for the other ones. This was solved in [R.C. Drumond and M.O. Terra Cunha, arXiv:0809.4445v1]. Here we briefly review the problem, state our results in a precise way, discuss the generality of the approach, and add some spec…
We calculate the dissipative dynamics of two-qubit quantum discord under Markovian environments. We analyze various dissipative channels such as dephasing, depolarizing, and generalized amplitude damping, assuming independent perturbation, in which each qubit is coupled to its own channel. Choosing initial conditions that manifest the so-called sudden death of entanglement, we compare the dynamics of entanglement with that of quantum discord. We show that in all cases where entanglement suddenly disappears, quantum discord vanishes only in the asymptotic limit, behaving similarly to individual…
An investigation is reported of the collective effects and the dynamics of atom atom entanglement in a system of two distant two level atoms which are coupled via an optical element. In the system under consideration, the two atoms, which are trapped in the foci of a lens, are coupled to a common environment being in the vacuum state and they emit photons spontaneously. A fraction of the emitted photons from each atom is thus focused on the position of the other atom. The presence of optical element between two distant atoms leads to the occurrence of delayed collective effects, such as delaye…
Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) steering is a useful resource for secure quantum information tasks. It is crucial to investigate the effect of inevitable loss and noise in quantum channels on EPR steering. We analyze and experimentally demonstrate the influence of purity of quantum states and excess noise on Gaussian EPR steering by distributing a two-mode squeezed state through lossy and noisy channels, respectively. We show that the impurity of state never leads to sudden death of Gaussian EPR steering, but the noise in quantum channel can. Then we revive the disappeared Gaussian EPR steering …
We study the dynamics of bound pairs in the extended Hubbard model driven by a linear external field. It is shown that two interacting bosons or singlet fermions with nonzero on-site and nearest-neighbor interaction strengths can always form bound pairs in the absence of an external field. There are two bands of bound pairs, one of which may have incomplete wave vectors when it has an overlap with the scattering band, referred to as an imperfect band. In the presence of the external field, the dynamics of the bound pair in the perfect band exhibits distinct Bloch-Zener oscillation (BZO), while…
We analyze the dynamics of entanglement due to decoherence in a system of two identical fermions with spin $3/2$ interacting with a global bosonic environment. We resort to an appropriate measure of the so-called fermionic entanglement to quantify the fermionic correlations, and compare its dynamics with that of a pair of distinguishable qubits immersed in the same environment. According to the system's initial state, three types of qualitatively different dynamics are identified: i) \textit{invariant regime}, corresponding to initial states that belong to a decoherence free subspace (DFS), wh…
We study the energy level crossings of the states and thermal fidelity for a two-qubit system in the presence of a transverse and inhomogeneous magnetic field. It is shown clearly the effects of the anisotropic factor of the magnetic field through the contour figures of energy level crossing in two subspaces, the isotropy subspace and anisotropy subspace. We calculate the quantum fidelity between the ground state and the state of the system at temperature $T$, and the results show the strong effect of the anisotropic factor again. In addition, by making use of the transition of Yangian generat…
I explore the entanglement evolution of a four qubit cluster state in a dephasing environment concentrating on the phenomenon of entanglement sudden death (ESD). Specifically, I ask whether the onset of ESD has an effect on the utilization of this cluster state as a means of implementing a single qubit rotation in the measurement based cluster state model of quantum computation. To do this I compare the evolution of the entanglement to the fidelity, a measure of how accurately the desired state (after the measurement based operations) is achieved. I find that ESD does not cause a change of beh…
We investigate the entanglement dynamics of two interacting qubits in a common vacuum environment. The inevitable environment interaction leads to entanglement sudden death (ESD) in a two qubit entangled state system. The entanglement dynamics can be modified by the use of local unitary operations (quantum gates), applied on the system during its evolution. We show that these operations not only delays or avoids the ESD but also advances the entanglement revival with high concurrence value depending on the time of operation. We have analytically found out different time windows for switching w…
We study the dynamics of entanglement in continuous variable quantum systems (CVQS). Specifically, we study the phenomena of Entanglement Sudden Death (ESD) in general two-mode-N-photon states undergoing pure dephasing. We show that for these states, ESD never occurs. These states are generalizations of the so-called High NOON states, shown to decrease the Rayleigh limit of lambda to lambda/N, which promises great improvement in resolution of interference patterns if states with large N are physically realized. However, we show that in dephasing NOON states, the time to reach V_crit, critical …
The finite time end of entanglement between two decohering qubits can be modified by local, unitary actions performed during the decohering process. Depending on the time when such action is taken, the end can be speeded up or slowed down, or even averted all together. This phenomenon offers practical applications for the stabilization of entangled quantum states. Details concerning hastening or delaying the finite time end of entanglement are presented for two qubits which decay spontaneously into statistically independent reservoirs.
