Dynamics of two qubits in common environment

Abstract

We consider the entanglement evolution of two qubits embedded into disordered multiconnected environment. We model the environment and its interaction with qubits by large random matrices allowing for a possibility to describe environments of meso- and even nanosize. We obtain general formulas for the time dependent reduced density matrix of the qubits corresponding to several cases of the qubit-environment interaction and initial condition. We then work out an analog of the Born–Markov approximation to find the evolution of the widely used entanglement quantifiers: the concurrence, the negativity and the quantum discord. We show that even in this approximation the time evolution of the reduced density matrix can be non-Markovian, thereby describing certain memory effects due to the backaction of the environment on qubits. In particular, we find the vanishing of the entanglement (Entanglement Sudden Death) at finite moments and its revivals (Entanglement Sudden Birth). Our results, partly known and partly new, can be viewed as a manifestation of the universality of certain properties of decoherent qubit evolution which have been found previously in various versions of bosonic macroscopic environment.