Entanglement dynamics for atoms near a reflecting boundary: Enhancement and suppression by environment-induced interactions
Phys. Rev. A 113, 062437 – Published 15 June, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/bcyl-6674
Abstract
We investigate how environment-induced interactions influence the entanglement dynamics of two atoms held at fixed positions near a perfectly reflecting boundary. Within the framework of open quantum systems, we explicitly incorporate the environment-induced energy shifts, including both atom-boundary contributions and an environment-induced atom-atom interaction, which are often neglected in previous studies. We show that, for any initial two-atom state, these energy-shift effects qualitatively and quantitatively modify the entanglement dynamics relative to treatments that omit them. Depending on the geometry and the parameter regime, the environment-induced interactions can either enhance entanglement generation—yielding a larger maximum concurrence and a longer entanglement lifetime—or suppress it, reducing both the peak concurrence and the survival time. This behavior contrasts sharply with the free-space case, where the environment-induced atom-atom interaction affects entanglement generation only for a restricted class of initial states and does so in an exclusively assisting manner.
