Entanglement sudden death in qubit–qutrit systems

Abstract

We demonstrate the existence of entanglement sudden death (ESD), the complete loss of entanglement in finite time, in qubit–qutrit systems. In particular, ESD is shown to occur in such systems initially prepared in a one-parameter class of entangled mixed states and then subjected to local dephasing noise. Together with previous results, this proves the existence of ESD for some states in all quantum systems for which rigorously defined mixed-state entanglement measures have been identified. We conjecture that ESD exists in all quantum systems prepared in appropriate bipartite states.