Physics Letters B 750 (2015) 396–400
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Physics Letters B
www.elsevier.com/locate/physletb
“Hot entanglement”? – A nonequilibrium quantum field theory
scrutiny
J.-T. Hsiang
a,∗
, B.L. Hu
a,b
a
Center for Particle Physics and Field Theory, Department of Physics, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China
b
Maryland Center for Fundamental Physics and Joint Quantum Institute, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA
a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Article history:
Received
9 July 2015
Received
in revised form 16 September
2015
Accepted
17 September 2015
Available
online 25 September 2015
Editor:
M. Cveti
ˇ
c
Keywords:
Quantum
field theory
Nonequilibrium
quantum dynamics
Quantum
open systems
Thermal
entanglement
The possibility of maintaining entanglement in a quantum system at finite, even high, temperatures –
the so-called ‘hot entanglement’ – has obvious practical interest, but also requires closer theoretical
scrutiny. Since quantum entanglement in a system evolves in time and is continuously subjected to
environmental degradation, a nonequilibrium description by way of open quantum systems is called for.
To identify the key issues and the contributing factors that may permit ‘hot entanglement’ to exist,
or the lack thereof, we carry out a model study of two spatially-separated, coupled oscillators in a
shared bath depicted by a finite-temperature scalar field. From the Langevin equations we derived for
the normal modes and the entanglement measure constructed from the covariance matrix we examine
the interplay between direct coupling, field-induced interaction and finite separation on the structure of
late-time entanglement. We show that the coupling between oscillators plays a crucial role in sustaining
entanglement at intermediate temperatures and over finite separations. In contrast, the field-induced
interaction between the oscillators which is a non-Markovian effect becomes very ineffective at high
temperature. We determine the critical temperature above which entanglement disappears to be bounded
in the leading order by the inverse frequency of the center-of-mass mode of the reduced oscillator
system, a result not unexpected, which rules out hot entanglement in such settings.
© 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Funded by SCOAP
3
.
1. Introduction
Recently Galve et al. [1,2] pointed out the possibility of keep-
ing
quantum entanglement alive in a system at high temperatures
by driving the system of two oscillators with a time-dependent
interaction term. This is important in practical terms because if en-
tanglement
in a quantum open system can be maintained at high
temperatures, it eases the way to how devices for quantum in-
formation
processing can be conceptualized and designed. From
a theoretical viewpoint understanding the basic mechanisms of
obtaining this so-called ‘hot entanglement’ [3] is also of great in-
terest.
Before
beginning the analysis, we note the word ‘hot’ con-
veys
three layers of meaning in three different contexts, referring
to quantum systems A) kept in thermal equilibrium at all times,
B) in a nonequilibrium condition and evolving, possibly but not nec-
essarily,
toward an equilibrium state, and C) in a nonequilibrium
*
Corresponding author.
E-mail
addresses: cosmology@gmail.com (J.-T. Hsiang), blhu@umd.edu (B.L. Hu).
steady state at late times. In this study we derive the fully nonequi-
librium
dynamics of a system of two coupled quantum harmonic
oscillators interacting with a common bath described by a bosonic
field at finite temperature T . Thus our present work falls under
Case B, which is in contrast to Case A [4,5], where a quantum sys-
tem
is assumed to be already in equilibrium and remains that way.
We depict how entanglement of the open quantum system evolves
in time and derive the critical temperature above which entan-
glement
cannot survive. In an accompanying paper [6] we study
one subcase of Case C, that of a quantum system in nonequilib-
rium
steady state (NESS) at late times, using the framework and
results obtained in [7]. The system we analyze consists of two cou-
pled
quantum harmonic oscillators each interacting with its own
bath, described by a scalar field, set at two different temperatures
T
1
> T
2
which together form the environment. Carrying out a fully
systematic analysis of how quantum entanglement in open sys-
tems
under different nonequilibrium conditions evolves is, in our
view, a necessity before any claim of “hot entanglement” can be
asserted.
In
terms of methodology our present study makes use of the
conceptual framework of quantum open systems [8] and the tech-
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2015.09.047
0370-2693/
© 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Funded by
SCOAP
3
.