Long-lived spin entanglement induced by a spatially correlated thermal bath

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that two qubits coupled to a common thermal bath can become long-lived entangled through dissipative processes, surpassing typical decoherence times, with potential implementation in ion traps.

Contribution

It reveals a mechanism for sustained entanglement via dissipative dynamics induced by a spatially correlated thermal bath, including analytical expressions and experimental proposals.

Findings

Entanglement lifetime exceeds single-qubit decoherence times

Analytical expression for long-time concurrence derived

Proposed ion trap experiment for observing effects

Abstract

We investigate how two spatially separated qubits coupled to a common heat bath can be entangled by purely dissipative dynamics. We identify a dynamical time scale associated with the lifetime of the dissipatively generated entanglement and show that it can be much longer than either the typical single-qubit decoherence time or the time scale on which a direct exchange interaction can entangle the qubits. We give an approximate analytical expression for the long-time evolution of the qubit concurrence and propose an ion trap scheme in which such dynamics should be observable.