Cooling distant atoms into entangled states via coupled cavities

Abstract

We propose a scheme for generating steady entanglement between two distant atomic qubits in the coupled-cavity system via laser cooling. With suitable choice of the laser frequencies, the target entangled state is the only ground state that is not excited by the lasers due to large detunings. The laser excitations of other ground states, together with dissipative processes, drive the system to the target state which is the unique steady state of the system. Numerical simulation shows that the maximally entangled state with high fidelity can be produced with presently available cooperativity.