Eur. Phys. J. D (2015) 69: 123
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2015-50901-6

Regular Article

Preparation of entanglement between atoms in spatially separated cavities via fiber loss

¹ Department of Physics, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, P.R. China
² Center for Quantum Sciences and School of Physics, Northeast Normal University, Changchun 130024, P.R. China
³ School of Physics and Information Engineering, Shanxi Normal University, Linfen 041004, Shanxi, P.R. China
⁴ Department of Physics, College of Science, Yanbian University, Yanji, Jilin 133002, P.R. China

^a e-mail: szhang@ybu.edu.cn

Received: 22 December 2014
Received in final form: 13 March 2015
Published online: 8 May 2015

Abstract

We propose a scheme to prepare a maximally entangled state for two Λ-type atoms trapped in separate optical cavities coupled through an optical fiber based on the combined effect of the unitary dynamics and the dissipative process. Our work shows that the fiber loss, as well as the atomic spontaneous emission and the cavity decay, is no longer undesirable, but requisite to prepare the distributed entanglement, which is meaningful for the long distance quantum information processing tasks. Originating from an arbitrary state, the desired state could be prepared without precise time control. The robustness of the scheme is numerically demonstrated by considering various parameters.