Optical pumping into many-body entanglement

Abstract

We propose a scheme of optical pumping by which a system of atoms coupled to harmonic oscillators is driven to an entangled steady state through the atomic spontaneous emission. It is shown that the optical pumping can be tailored so that the many-body atomic state asymptotically reaches an arbitrary stabilizer state regardless of the initial state. The proposed scheme can be suited to various physical systems. In particular, the ion-trap realization is well within current technology.