Sudden Birth Versus Sudden Death of Entanglement in Multipartite Systems

Abstract

We study the entanglement dynamics of two cavities interacting with independent reservoirs. Expectedly, we observe that, as the cavity entanglement is depleted, it is transferred to the reservoir degrees of freedom. We find that when the cavity entanglement suddenly disappear, the reservoir entanglement suddenly and necessarily appears. Surprisingly, we show that this {\it entanglement sudden birth} can manifest before, simultaneously, or even after {\it entanglement sudden death}. Finally, we present an explanatory study of other entanglement partitions and of higher dimensional systems.

5 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters