Entanglement dynamics of a three-qubit system with different interatomic distances**Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 61178012, 11204156, and 11304179), the Specialized Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education, China (Grant Nos. 20133705110001 and 20123705120002), and the Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province, China (Grant Nos. BS2013DX034, ZR2012FQ024, and ZR2014AP009).

Abstract

We investigate the tripartite entanglement dynamics of three two-level atoms in a multi-mode vacuum field. By considering the influences of the interatomic distance and the initial condition on the lower bound of concurrence and the tripartite negativity, we show that an optimal interatomic distance can be found to minimize the collective damping. Interestingly, at the same optimal distance, the tripartite entanglement would be maximized in the open dynamics process. In the case of shorter interatomic distance, the tripartite entanglement can display the oscillatory behavior in the initial short-time limit and be trapped in a stationary value in the long-time limit. In addition, the tripartite entanglement for the general situation with different interatomic distances is also discussed.