Observation of entanglement sudden death and rebirth by controlling solid-state spin bath

TL;DR

This study demonstrates control over entanglement dynamics in a solid-state system, observing phenomena like sudden death and rebirth of entanglement by tuning environmental interactions in a diamond sample.

Contribution

It introduces a simple method to control entanglement dynamics, including sudden death and rebirth, in a solid-state system by tuning the spin bath environment.

Findings

Observed entanglement sudden death and rebirth in a diamond sample.

Controlled non-Markovian entanglement dynamics via a natural experimental knob.

Achieved coherent entanglement dynamics by tuning environmental coupling.

Abstract

Quantum entanglement, the essential resource for quantum information processing, has rich dynamics under different environments. Probing different entanglement dynamics typically requires exquisite control of complicated system-environment coupling in real experimental systems. Here, by a simple control of the effective solid-state spin bath in a diamond sample, we observe rich entanglement dynamics, including the conventional asymptotic decay as well as the entanglement sudden death, a term coined for the phenomenon of complete disappearance of entanglement after a short finite time interval. Furthermore, we observe counter-intuitive entanglement rebirth after its sudden death in the same diamond sample by tuning an experimental parameter, demonstrating that we can conveniently control the non-Markovianity of the system-environment coupling through a natural experimental knob. Further tuning of this experimental knob can make the entanglement dynamics completely coherent under the same environmental coupling. Probing of entanglement dynamics, apart from its fundamental interest, may find applications in quantum information processing through control of the environmental coupling.