Photon exchange and correlations transfer in atom-atom entanglement dynamics

Abstract

We analyze the entanglement dynamics of a system composed by a pair of neutral two-level atoms that are initially entangled, and the electromagnetic field, initially in the vacuum state, within the formalism of perturbative quantum field theory up to the second order. We show that entanglement sudden death and revival can occur while the atoms remain spacelike-separated and therefore cannot be related with photon exchange between the atoms. We interpret these phenomena as the consequence of a transfer of atom-atom entanglement to atom-field entanglement and viceversa. We also consider the different bi-partitions of the system, finding similar relationships between their entanglement evolutions.