Steady entanglement out of thermal equilibrium

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that two qubits near a thermal body at different temperatures can naturally develop steady entanglement through dissipative dynamics, offering a new robust method for entanglement generation.

Contribution

It reveals that thermal non-equilibrium conditions can induce steady entanglement in two qubits without external intervention, a novel mechanism in quantum thermodynamics.

Findings

Thermal non-equilibrium can generate steady entanglement.

Entanglement arises from dissipative dynamics alone.

Steady entanglement is robust against environmental effects.

Abstract

We study two two-level atomic quantum systems (qubits) placed close to a body held at a temperature different from that of the surrounding walls. While at thermal equilibrium the two-qubit dynamics is characterized by not entangled steady thermal states, we show that absence of thermal equilibrium may bring to the generation of entangled steady states. Remarkably, this entanglement emerges from the two-qubit dissipative dynamic itself, without any further external action on the two qubits, suggesting a new protocol to produce and protect entanglement which is intrinsically robust to environmental effects.