Finite-time destruction of entanglement and non-locality by environmental influences

TL;DR

This paper reviews how environmental noise can abruptly destroy quantum entanglement and non-locality in finite time, highlighting their fragility despite decoherence occurring only asymptotically.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive review of recent theoretical and experimental findings on finite-time destruction of quantum correlations due to local environmental influences.

Findings

Environmental noise can cause finite-time loss of entanglement and non-locality.

Quantum correlations can vanish suddenly even when decoherence is asymptotic.

The review covers both theoretical models and experimental results.

Abstract

Entanglement and non-locality are non-classical global characteristics of quantum states important to the foundations of quantum mechanics. Recent investigations have shown that environmental noise, even when it is entirely local in influence, can destroy both of these properties in finite time despite giving rise to full quantum state decoherence only in the infinite time limit. These investigations, which have been carried out in a range of theoretical and experimental situations, are reviewed here.