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Steady-state entanglement and thermalization of coupled qubits in two common heat baths

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Abstract

In this work, we study the steady-state entanglement and thermalization of two coupled qubits embedded in two common baths with different temperatures. The common bath is relevant when the two qubits are difficult to be isolated to only contact with their local baths. With the quantum master equation constructed in the eigenstate representation of the coupled qubits, we have demonstrated the variations of steady-state entanglement with respect to various parameters of the qubits’ system in both equilibrium and nonequilibrium cases of the baths. The coupling strength and energy detuning of the qubits as well as the temperature gradient of the baths are found to be beneficial to the enhancement of the entanglement. We note a dark state of the qubits that is free from time-evolution and its initial population can greatly influence the steady-state entanglement. By virtues of effective temperatures, we also study the thermalization of the coupled qubits and their variations with energy detuning.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation (China) under Grant Nos. 11574178 and 61675115, and Shandong Provincial Natural Science Foundation (China) under Grant No. ZR2016JL005

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Shandong Provincial Key Laboratory of Laser Polarization and Information Technology, Department of Physics, Qufu Normal University, Qufu, 273165, China

    Li-Zhen Hu, Zhong-Xiao Man & Yun-Jie Xia

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  1. Li-Zhen Hu
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Correspondence to Zhong-Xiao Man.

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Hu, LZ., Man, ZX. & Xia, YJ. Steady-state entanglement and thermalization of coupled qubits in two common heat baths. Quantum Inf Process 17, 45 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11128-018-1825-x

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