The dynamics of two entangled qubits exposed to classical noise: role of spatial and temporal noise correlations

Abstract

We investigate the decay of two-qubit entanglement caused by the influence of classical noise. We consider the whole spectrum of cases ranging from independent to fully correlated noise affecting each qubit. We take into account different spatial symmetries of noises, and the regimes of noise autocorrelation time. The latter can be either much shorter than the characteristic qubit decoherence time (Markovian decoherence), or much longer (approaching the quasi-static bath limit). We express the entanglement of two-qubit states in terms of expectation values of spherical tensor operators which allows for transparent insight into the role of the symmetry of both the two-qubit state and the noise for entanglement dynamics.