Spontaneously created entanglement between two atoms

Spontaneous emission as a potential tool for creation of entanglement between two atoms is investigated. We assume that the atoms are coupled to the same environment and study entanglement engineering between the atoms and its transfer between different states. The role of the atomic coherence induced by spontaneous emission will be explored which, in contrast to what is generally believed, can create entanglement between initially unentangled atoms. We quantify entanglement by the concurrence and find that it exhibits threshold properties that can lead to interesting noncontinuous phenomena of sudden birth and sudden death of entanglement. In addition, we consider the mechanism involved in creation of entanglement between distant atoms coupled to a single-mode cavity field. We include a possible variation of the coupling constants between the atoms and the cavity mode with location of the atoms in a standing-wave cavity mode. Effectively, we engineer two coupled atoms whose the dynamics are analogous to that of interacting and collectively damped two nonidentical atoms. We illustrate the interesting result that spatial variations of the coupling constants can lead to a stationary entanglement between the atoms. We explain this effect in terms of the trapping phenomenon of atomic population in a non-decaying entangled state.