Abstract

The concept of time delayed creation of entanglement by spontaneous emission is investigated. A threshold effect for the creation of entanglement is found that the initially unentangled qubits can be entangled after a finite time. This delayed creation of entanglement, that we call sudden birth of entanglement, is opposite to the currently extensively discussed sudden death of entanglement and is characteristic for transient dynamics of one-photon entangled states of the system. We determine the threshold time for the creation of entanglement and show that it is related to time the correlation between the qubits attains its maximal negative value.

© 2007 Optical Society of America