Quantum Information Processing (2020) 19:306

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11128-020-02803-5

Entanglement dynamics of two coupled spins interacting

with an adjustable spin bath: effect of an exponential
variable magnetic field

A. Dehghani1 · B. Mojaveri2 · M. Vaez2

Received: 24 September 2019 / Accepted: 5 August 2020

© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020

Abstract
The present work is devoted to studying the entanglement dynamics of two central
spins coupled in a spin environment and subjected, simultaneously, to an external 
magnetic field changing with time t as an exponential function B 1 − e−λt . We
want to determine whether interaction among central spins with an external magnetic
field as well as preparation of bath in an appropriate spin coherent state, |βbath , is
shown to affect the decoherence process in a qualitatively significant manner. We show
that the dynamics of the entanglement depends on the initial state of the central spins
as well as the bath, the coupling constants and the strength of a magnetic field, B, λ.
Compared with some cases already discussed in the literature as magnetic fields of
periodic sin(λt) and cos(λt) functions, we can see that a magnetic field of exponential
function e−λt plays a very crucial role in the entanglement generation between the
two-spin qubits and its protection. To do this, we use an operator technique of the
Holstein–Primakoff transformation, and the dynamics of the reduced density matrix
of two coupled spin qubits is obtained in both finite and infinite numbers of bath spins.
We also derive the concurrence measure to quantify the entanglement of the reduced
density matrix of the two coupled central spins and look for conditions that provide
information on whether this becomes robust against decoherence. It has been shown
that the entanglement distribution can be both amplified, stabilized and protected

B A. Dehghani
a_dehghani@tabrizu.ac.ir; alireza.dehghani@gmail.com
B. Mojaveri
bmojaveri@azaruniv.ac.ir
M. Vaez
m.vaez68@gmail.com

1 Department of Physics, Payame Noor University, P.O. Box 19395-3697, Tehran,

Islamic Republic of Iran
2 Department of Physics, Azarbaijan Shahid Madani University, P.O. Box 51745-406, Tabriz,
Islamic Republic of Iran

0123456789().: V,-vol 123

306 Page 2 of 16 A. Dehghani et al.

with B, λ and β. These results motivate developments toward the implementation or

simulation of the purely theoretical model employing exponential fields.

Keywords Decoherence · Entanglement · Spin-bath · Non-Markovian environment

1 Introduction

Quantum entanglement is the most strongest feature of quantum mechanics [1], as

well as the main resources for quantum information processing [2], quantum com-
munication [3–5], teleportation [6], dense coding [7,8] and cryptography [9,10]. It is
worth mentioning that over the last few years, there have been considerable interests in
the study and implementation of quantum information processing to generate various
types of entangled states by using different many proposals [11,12].
On the other hand, the interaction of a system with a surrounding environment is
unavoidable [13,14] which can be regarded as the main difficulty of quantum infor-
mation processes and leads to the decoherence effect [14,15]. This is because of that
the environment affects quantum correlations of the system, and some unexpected as
well as unpleasant effects occur. Then, describing the dynamics of such open quantum
systems becomes a non-trivial problem. In this regard, the dynamics of many open
quantum systems was investigated and the role of the environment was evaluated using
the method of Markovian master equation [13]. As an assumption, the system and
the environment are considered to weakly interact so that perturbation theory can be
employed. Also, the environment is often assumed to have a very short correlation time
so that memory effects are negligible and the system–environment correlations can
be ignored. For Markovian environments, one can show that the environment quickly
loses any information regarding the system [16]. However, all these approximations
are expected to break down in the strong system–environment coupling regime.
In addition to the major issues studied in this area, the central spin model has been
widely used for experimental and theoretical studies in the areas of quantum informa-
tion processing to illustrate the nature of quantum decoherence. A central spin system S
interacting with a non-Markovian environment formed by N independent spins
 N with gkk
representing their coupling strength, through the Hamiltonian H = σ2z k=1 gk σz ,
may be the simplest solvable model of decoherence [2,14,17,18] where we use the
standard notation according to which σik and σi , i = x, y, z denote Pauli operators
acting on the k-th environmental spin and on the central system. In such case, the cen-
tral spin is used as a simple two state-one bit approximation for a memory of classical
apparatus. Cucchietti et al. studied a very simple model of decoherence due to spin
environments including a central spin-system, interacting with a collection of environ-
ment spins. In the absence of a self-Hamiltonian, they showed that any assumptions
about the coupling strengths can lead to a universal suppression of coherence between
pointer states [19]. A similar model was used in the nuclear magnetic resonance set-
ting to compute corrections to the second and fourth moments of the decay of the
polarization signal [20,21]. On the other hand, the presence of a self-Hamiltonian of
the central spin was used to show that relatively straightforward assumptions about
the dynamics can lead to the emergence of a preferred set of pointer states due to

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Entanglement dynamics of two coupled spins interacting… Page 3 of 16 306

environment-induced super-selection. Beside many body of work on decoherence due

to spin environments [22,23], their findings are most relevant for quantum error cor-
rection and other strategies to fight decoherence in a quantum computer.
In continuation, the entanglement dynamics of a two- and three-spin-qubit system
coupled to a spin environment with (non)uniform coupling was discussed through
using the time-dependent density-matrix formalism. Also, the entanglement dynam-
ics of two electronic spins coupled to a bath of nuclear spins was investigated in Ref.
[24], where the authors considered three types of initial states with different correla-
tions between the system and the bath, i.e., quantum correlation, classical correlation
and no-correlation, and showed that the initial correlations can effectively avoid the
occurrence of entanglement sudden death. Entanglement dynamics of two spin qubits
in a spin environment with non-uniform coupling was discussed in Ref. [25], where
the authors showed that the entanglement generation and decay depend on the number
of environment spins, the coupling strength between the central spin system and the
environment, and the initial state of the central spin system. Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya
(DM) interaction effects on the entanglement dynamics of a two-qubit XXZ spin sys-
tem in the non-Markovian environment were established [26] and explored that for an
initially entangled qubit pair, the DM interaction generates entanglement and enhances
it in the revival region. At high temperatures and for weak coupling between the two
qubits, the DM interactions preserve entanglement.
Majeed et al. solved an exactly solvable model of a quantum spin interacting with
a spin environment both with and without initial correlations for arbitrary system–
environment coupling strengths. They showed that the effect of the system state
preparation may or may not be significant in the strong system–environment cou-
pling regime at low temperatures. They also studied the dynamics of the entanglement
between two spins interacting with a common spin environment with and without
initial system–environment correlations to demonstrate that the correlations can play
a significant role in the dynamics of two-qubit systems as well [27].
The exact quantum dynamics of the reduced density matrix of two coupled spin
qubits in a quantum Heisenberg XY spin star environment in the thermodynamic
limit at arbitrarily finite temperatures was obtained [28]. The authors investigated the
effect of detuning, which in their model can be controlled by the strength of a locally
applied external magnetic field, and found that detuning has a significant effect on
the entanglement generation between the two-spin qubits. In this way, Zhong et al.
revealed the influence of constant external magnetic field on the decoherence of a
central electron spin of an atom coupled to an antiferromagnetic environment [29].
So, Tchoffo et al. presented an extension of the work of Zhong et al. in which the effect
of the variable field of periodic cos(t) function on the dynamics of a central electron
spin coupled to an antiferromagnetic qubit bath was established [30]. The magnetic
field [31,32] provides an additional effective parameter (besides the temperature T )
for controlling entanglement. Kamta et al. [33] investigated the entanglement of two-
qubit XY systems in the presence of a constant field Bẑ and found that the thermal
entanglement of anisotropic samples can be manipulated and produced for any finite
T through changes both in the anisotropy and in the magnetic field strength B. Sun
et al. [34] studied thermal entanglement in a two-qubit XY model with a non-uniform
field along the ẑ axis and showed that the entanglement and the critical temperature Tc

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for the entanglement to disappear may be enhanced under a non-uniform field. Li et al.
[35] introduced the thermal entanglement of an anisotropic Heisenberg XYZ model
with spin-orbit interaction under a non-uniform field. Within these studies, the central
topic is the thermal entanglement [36], i.e., quantum entanglement arising from the
interaction of the multi-qubit system with the environment or the reservoir at thermal
equilibrium.
On the one hand, the spin-pair entanglement is a reasonable measure for decoher-
ence between the considered two-spin system and the environmental spins. On the
other hand, the correlation between the system and the environment leads to the deco-
herence of the system and the decrease in entanglement between the two spins. For this
reason, evaluating the entanglement remaining in the considered system will help us
to understand the behavior of the decoherence between the considered two spins and
their environment [37]. In the quantum computer, it is important to keep the entangle-
ment between qubits in order to prevent individual qubit decoherence. Thus, studying
the entanglement between qubits might provide a direct way to maintain it during the
quantum computation. It is worth mentioning that the mentioned procedures have to
face the problems due to the interaction of a system with the surrounding environment.
The action of the environment on the dynamical behavior of entanglement is one of
the long-lasting issues in quantum information and communication science, usually
leading to the disappearance of entanglement, even at a finite time [38–44]. This is the
reason why many efforts have been devoted to finding strategies for entanglement pro-
tection in open quantum systems, for example, by engineering environment structure
or by suitable control techniques [45–59].
Engineering, controlling and simulating quantum dynamics of composite systems
is a challenging task. Nevertheless, these techniques are crucial to develop quantum
technologies and preserve quantum properties. Practical applications require robust
entangled states, which entails a sufficiently long lifetime of the quantum states. How-
ever, in many cases entanglement of two-level atoms is not stable enough. To stabilize
atomic entanglement, engineered protocols can be adopted. In particular, stabilization
methods have been proposed by means of an engineered interaction as well as exter-
nal fields. In addition, entanglement generation and protection can be achieved which
crucially depends on initial correlations present in a driving field and on the system
parameters.
In this work, we analyze the time behavior of quantum entanglement through the
theoretical model of two coupled spins embedded in a spin environment. In particular,
we use an exponential variable B-field and explore the effect of this external classical
field as well as an engineered bath on the entanglement generation and preservation
between the two-spin qubits. To the best of our knowledge, exponential fields have
not been experimentally reported while some proposals of implementation exist in
the literature [60], and then our aim here is to explore their role within a quantum
information scenario. We indeed show that the realization of such a magnetic field
with an engineered bath would enable us to protect and amplify entanglement against
decoherence.
The paper is organized as follows. In Sect. 2, we establish the physical model which
consists of two spin-qubits subjected to two external magnetic fields of controllable
strength are locally applied to the two qubits and both of these qubits surrounded by

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Entanglement dynamics of two coupled spins interacting… Page 5 of 16 306

a common star spin bath composed of N spins. We derived the evolution equations of
our model and investigate the dynamics of entanglement of two central qubits. In Sect.
3, we explore the amplification, stabilization and protection of entanglement using the
magnetic field and appropriate engineering of the bath., where the two central spins
are also initially in the maximally entangled states |++−|−−
√ . Also, we consider a
2
situation in which N → ∞, and the Hamiltonian of a spin-boson type is governed,
which describes a system of two-qubit interaction with a single-mode and bosonic
field. In Sect. 4, we finally discuss the results and conclude the paper.

2 The model

Besides the many previous extensions and generalizations of a two-spin-qubit system

interacting with bath spins via a Heisenberg XY interaction with Ising interactions
between them [61–63] and starlike configuration with coupling of equal strength [64,
65], we are interested in studying the time evolution of the quantum entanglement
exhibited by a two-interacting-spin- 21 system when the Hamiltonian governing the
dynamics is time-dependent. We restrict ourselves to a starlike configuration with a
coupling of equal strength and the interactions between bath spins are also of XY
type, similar to the cases considered in Refs. [28,64,65]. The Hamiltonian for the total
system is

2    
(1) (2) (1) (2)
H = B(μ)
z (t) + 1 Sz(μ) +  S+ S− + S− S+ + 0 Sz(1) Sz(2)
μ=1

 
Hs
N 
g 2 
(μ) (l) (μ) (l)
+√ S+ S− + S− S+
N μ=1
l=1

 
Hs−bath
g0  N 
(l) ( p) (l) ( p)
+ S+ S− + S− S+ , (1)
l, p=1;l= p
N
 
Hbath

where Hs and Hbath are the self-Hamiltonians of the system and bath, respectively,
and Hs−bath is here termed the interaction between the central two qubits and the
surrounding spins. The first term represents a time-dependent external magnetic field,
B(μ) (t) = B(1 − e−λμ t )ẑ, along the ẑ axis interacts with the central spin-qubits
system.  and 0 are the coupling constants between two-qubit spins. g is the coupling
constant between the qubit system spins and bath spins, whereas g0 is that between
the bath spins which are considered of equal magnitude. Sz , S± = Sx ± S y are the
Pauli matrices which are represented in the standard spin basis ordered as follows:
(μ) (l)
Sz |± = ±|±. S± are the spin-flip operators of the qubit system spins, and S± are
the corresponding operators of the l-th spin in the bath which runs from 1 to the total
number of the bath spins, N .

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306 Page 6 of 16 A. Dehghani et al.

By using the angular momentum addition theorem, i.e., introducing the total spin
 N (l)
operators
  J± = l=1 S± , and the Holstein–Primakoff transformation [66], i.e., J+ =
† √
J− = b N − b† b, one can rewrite the Hamiltonians H B and HS B , of Eq. (1), as
†

follows:

g   (μ) (l) 
2 N
(μ) (l)
Hs−bath = √ S+ S− + S− S+
N μ=1 l=1
⎡ ⎤
g ⎣  (μ)  (l)  (μ)  (l) ⎦
2 N 2 N
= √ S+ S− + S− S+
N μ=1 l=1 μ=1 l=1

g  (μ) 
2
(μ)
= √ S+ J− + S− J+
N μ=1
⎡   ⎤
2
(μ)
†
b b (μ)
†
b b⎦
=g ⎣ S+ 1− b + S− b† 1 − , (2a)
N N
μ=1

g0 
N 
(l)( p) (l) ( p)
Hbath = S+ S− + S− S+
N
l, p=1;l= p
⎡ ⎤
g0 ⎣ (l)  ( p)  (l)  ( p) ⎦
N N N N
= S+ S− + S− S+ − g0
N
l=1 p=1 l=1 p=1
g0  
= J+ J− + J− J+ − g0
N
    
b† b b† b
= g0 b† 1 − b + bb† 1 − − g0
N N
  
b† b † b† b
= g0 b b −
†
(b b − 1) + (b b + 1) 1 −
†
− g0
N N
 
b† b
= 2g0 b† b 1 − , (2b)
N

with [b, b† ] = 1, [b† b, b] = −b, and [b† b, b† ] = b† .

We now consider the interaction picture that simplifies the description of the system
evolution. For this reason, we decompose the systems Hamiltonian as H = H0 + V ,
where H0 = Hbath describe a solvable Hamiltonian of which we already know the
eigensolutions and other properties, and V = Hs−bath + Hbath represents a perturbation
that drives an interesting dynamics. In the so-called interaction picture, the state is
evolved by the Schrödinger equation given by

∂|(t)IP
i = VIP |IP , (3)
∂t

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Entanglement dynamics of two coupled spins interacting… Page 7 of 16 306

with
⎡ 
   
b† b 2itg0 2b† b+1
(1) (2) −1
VIP = e it H0
Ve −it H0
= Hs + g ⎣ S+ + S+ 1− e N
b
N
 ⎤
   
b† b −2itg0 2b† b+1
(1) (2) −1
+ S− + S− b †
1− e N ⎦. (4)
N

Using the series form of the state, |(t)IP , in the standard and complete basis {| +
+, n, | + −, n + 1, | − +, n + 1, | − −, n + 2}:

|(t)IP = [c1 (t)| + +, n + c2 (t)| + −, n + 1
n=0
+c3 (t)| − +, n + 1 + c4 (t)| − −, n + 2] , (5)

and Eq. (3) may lead to the following differential equations, with respect to the coef-
ficients c1,2,3,4 (t):

0 + 2B(2 − e−λ1 t − e−λ2 t )

i ċ1 (t) = c1 (t)
 4
 
n 2itg0 2n+1N −1
+g (n + 1)(1 − )e [c2 (t) + c3 (t)], (6a)
N
  
n −2itg0 2n+1 N −1
0 + 2B(e−λ1 t − e−λ2 t )
i ċ2 (t) = g (n + 1)(1 − )e c1 (t) − c2 (t)
N 4
  
n + 1 2itg0 2n+3 N −1
+c3 (t) + g (n + 2)(1 − )e c4 (t), (6b)
N
  
n −2itg0 2n+1 N −1
i ċ3 (t) = g (n + 1)(1 − )e c1 (t)
N
0 − 2B(e−λ1 t − e−λ2 t )
+c2 (t) − c3 (t)
 4
 
n + 1 2itg0 2n+3 N −1
+g (n + 2)(1 − )e c4 (t), (6c)
N
  
n + 1 −2itg0 2n+3 N −1
i ċ4 (t) = g (n + 2)(1 − )e [c2 (t) + c3 (t)]
N
0 − 2B(2 − e−λ1 t − e−λ2 t )
+ c4 (t). (6d)
4

By deriving the solutions of the above mentioned four-coupled differential equations,

we can easily verify the elements of the reduced density matrix of the central qubits
system and investigate the time evolution of some measures that quantify the deco-
herence and the entanglement.

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306 Page 8 of 16 A. Dehghani et al.

3 Concurrence of the central spin qubits: discussions and numerical

results

In what follows, our purpose is to quantify the amount of entanglement of the above
two-qubit system and its dynamical behavior in the presence of an external time-
dependent non-uniform magnetic field versus the parameters of the system. Then,
we employ a numerical approach to obtain the time evolution of the reduced density
matrix of the central qubits system and employ the concurrence measure [67], defined
by

C = Max[0, q1 − q2 − q3 − q4 ]. (7)

where the quantities

 qi are  the positive square roots of the eigenvalues of the opera-
tor (t)(σ y σ y )∗ (t)(σ y σ y ) in descending order and (t) denotes the reduced
density matrix of the central qubits system is obtained through a partial trace over the
bath degrees of freedom. Accordingly, a state is maximally entangled if it is equal to
1 and is equal to 0 for separable states.
♠ Weak coupling regime and different initial states of bath:
For a finite spin bath, the entanglement dynamics of the central qubits follows from
Eq. (6). In this way, we firstly specify the initial state of the system at t = 0, choose
different parameters of the Hamiltonian involved, e.g., B, λμ , 0 , g0 and g, and con-
sider a bath of N = 10, 50 and 100 interacting spins. We have plotted some figures to
display our numerical results. For example, in Fig. 1 we consider the initial qubits-bath
state to be a direct product |φ1  = |++−|−− √ |βbath and a weak coupling regime, i.e.,
2
in Fig. 1a1 , b1 and c1 with g = 0.05 as well as in Fig. 1a2 , b2 and c2 with g = 0.5
and adjust the other parameters involved such that g0 = 0 =  = 1 and B = 0. We
have chosen a bath of N = 10 (Fig. 1a), N = 50 (Fig. 1b) and N = 100 (Fig.  1c) spins
N βm
to be in a normalized coherent spin-state |βbath ∝ m=0 m!(N −m)! |m , with β as
√

an arbitrary complex variable, as well as the central qubits prepared in a maximally

entangled Bell state, |++−|−−
√ . The numerical simulation shows that the time evolu-
2
tion of the concurrence is rather complex and depends on the different values of the
parameters of the model, including the number of bath spins. For the case of weak
coupling g(= 0.05) 1 and small values of N = 10, if we set λ1,2 = 0 or B = 0 (the
magnetic field is switched off). We observe in Fig 1a1 that the entanglement is slightly
fallen with time; however, the concurrence does not vanish at long time scales and the
entanglement started to grow again. In Fig. 1a1 when large values of the complex vari-
able α(= 5, 10) are chosen, the entanglement is maintained for a long time. In other
words, preparation of bath with large amplitude spin modes enables one to amplify
and protect the entanglement against decoherence. By increasing the coupling coeffi-
cients, however, regarding the weak coupling regime, we will experience a completely
different dynamical behavior of the entanglement, e.g.. in Fig. 1a2 with g = 0.5 and
N = 10, we will observe sudden death and birth of entanglement for α = 1, and for
large amplitudes α = 5, 10, oscillatory behavior of entanglement may appear. For
large number of bath spins, i.e., N = 50, 100, we will see a behavior similar to the
previous case (N = 10) except that the entanglement is quickly suppressed with time

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Entanglement dynamics of two coupled spins interacting… Page 9 of 16 306

Fig. 1 Time evolution of the concurrence of the two central spins for three different number of spins in the
bath (first row) N = 10, (second row) N = 50 and (third row) N = 100, at weak g = 0.05 (left column),
and small coupling regime g = 0.5 (right column), for different fixed values of the amplitude of coherent
state β = 1 (solid and blue line), β = 5 (dashed and red line) and β = 10 (dotdashed and green line). The
other parameters are g0 =  = 0 = 1 and λ1 = λ2 = B = 0 (Color figure online)

(Fig. 1b1 and c1 ), and the time of rebirth is large than the previous case (Fig. 1b2
and c2 ). For small values of the coupling constant g = 0.5, the concurrence quickly
decays, whereas after a long time it rebirthes near to the same order of magnitude
as the corresponding initial value (Fig. 1b2 and c2 ). For the largest number of bath
spins, N = 100, and weak coupling regime, g = 0.05, the connection between the
central system and the environment is interrupted and we will see a behavior similar to
the bosonic environments, i.e., information is completely lost and cannot be retrieved
(Fig. 1c1 ).
♠ Strong coupling regime and effect of an exponential variable B-Field:
Now we check in detail the influence of an exponentially variable B-field on the
entanglement dynamics of the central two-qubit system by resorting to numerical cal-
culations. For simply but without lost generally, we choose a strong coupling regime,
consider the case of two identical qubits that are initially in the bell state, |++−|−−
√ ,
2

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306 Page 10 of 16 A. Dehghani et al.

and assume that the initial state of the bath as a coherent spin state, |αbath , where we
assumed that the amplitude α is considered as a constant in each case, i.e., for N = 10
(Fig. 2a) and two other cases N = 50, 100 (Fig. 2b, c) the magnitude of β is set to
be 10 and 1, respectively. The quantum entanglement evidently behaves differently
from the previous case [weak coupling regime (Fig. 1)]. In a large coupling regime,
by choosing g = 1 and other coupling constants as J = g0 =  = 0.5 without the
presence of a magnetic field the concurrence does not vanish at long time scales and
the entanglement reaches a stable state around C = 0.5 for the cases N = 10 and 50
(Fig. 2a1 and b1 ). However, for N = 100, the stability line is set to zero. When the
magnetic field is turned on, one may observe two different behaviors in accordance
with different numbers of bath spins; for small values of N = 10 existence of the men-
tioned magnetic field can amplify entanglement and protect it from decoherence and
delay the entanglement fluctuations time (Fig. 2a1 ); however, an interesting collapse
and revival patterns can occur for large numbers N = 50 and 100 with amplifications
of entanglement magnitude (Fig. 2b1 and c1 ). Although for a strong coupling regime
g = 1 and J = g0 =  = 0.05 (Fig. 2a2 , b2 and c2 ) the entanglement shows similar
behavior, it is at a higher level than the previous situation. It is worth mentioning that
the bath size effect on the entanglement can be controlled by an external magnetic
field changing with time t. We also mention that in both of these two situations, the
concurrence will increase with the increase of the value of an exponential external
magnetic field. In other words, this kind of magnetic field can be used to amplify and
protect entanglement against decoherence.
The above results allow us to get some fact about the nature of the decoherence
process and the pointer states which are dynamically selected by the environment. In
our proposed model, the eigenstate of the interaction Hamiltonian, i.e., |+−−|−+ √ ,
2
emerges as a preferred pointer state of the system defined as the ones which are
not perturbed by the interaction with the environment, while other superpositions
rapidly decay into their mixtures. In addition, we can notice that for large values of
the coherent state amplitudes, α, at the weak coupling regime, the concurrence of
the entangled state |++−|−−
√ converges to its initial value and is least perturbed. The
2
latter introduces new kind of the pointer states that do not coincide with the eigenstates
of the interaction Hamiltonian, which can be compared with a major difference with
them already discussed in Ref [68].
Finally, for the case of ferromagnetic interactions of the central qubits, J < 0 strong
coupling has the same effect on the decoherence and entanglement of the qubits as an
antiferromagnetic situation.
♠ The case of an infinite number of bath spins:
In the limit N → ∞, the operators H B and HS B converge to the following form of
the Hamiltonians of a spin-boson model, i.e.,

2
 
(μ) (μ)
HSNB→∞ = g S+ b + S− b† , (8a)
μ=1

H BN →∞ = 2g0 b† b. (8b)

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Entanglement dynamics of two coupled spins interacting… Page 11 of 16 306

Fig. 2 Time evolution of the concurrence of the two central spins for three different number of spins in the
bath (first row) N = 10, (second row) N = 50 and (third row) N = 100, at large g(= 1) > g0 =  =
0 (= 0.5) (left column), and strong coupling regime g(= 1)
g0 =  = 0 (= 0.05) (right column),
for different fixed values of the magnitude of magnetic field B = 0 (solid and blue line), B = 10 (dashed
and red line) and B = 20 (dotdashed and green line) with λ1 = λ2 = 1. The other parameters are β = 10
(first row) and β = 1 (second and third row) (Color figure online)

They describe two coupled qubits interacting with a single-mode thermal bosonic
bath field. The analysis of the problem is relevant to a cavity quantum electrodynam-
ics quantum information processing, and Eq. (6) also effectively hold for an infinite
number of bath spins. We note here that the effect of this single-mode environment
on the dynamics of the two coupled qubits is extremely non-Markovian and leads to
the revival behavior of the reduced density matrix or entanglement evolution of the
two coupled spins. This is different from the usual environment models that consist of
very large degrees of freedom, e.g., many bosonic modes and often cause the reduced
dynamics of the system of interest displaying an exponential decay in time behavior.
So the Markovian approximation usually used in the quantum optics master equation
will not work in our model. In this way, the authors in Ref. [69] studied a model of a
decoupled two-qubit system interacting with a single-mode thermal field at resonance
and the dynamics of the reduced density matrix for the two-qubit system is obtained

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306 Page 12 of 16 A. Dehghani et al.

Fig. 3 Time evolution of the concurrence of the two central spins in an infinite bath N → ∞ with α = 0.5,
at strong coupling regime g(= 1)
g0 =  = 0 (= 0.05), for different fixed values of the magnitude
of magnetic field B = 0 (dotted and blue line) and B = 20 (thick and red line) with λ1 = λ2 = 1 (Color
figure online)

using the method of the Kraus operator representation. In continuation, Xiao-Zhong

Yuan et al proposed a different approach of the operator technique to obtain the exact
non-Markovian dynamics of the reduced density matrix for a coupled two-qubit system
interacting with the bath spins in the thermodynamics limit and explored the effect
of detuning factor. However, the influence of the environmental initial state in the
presence of an exponentially time-variable magnetic field was not considered. Here,
we continue the calculation in which the initial density
 matrix of the total system is
|α|2 ∞
α
separable, i.e., ρ(0) = (0)⊗|αfield with |αfield = e− 2
n
√ as a standard
n=0 n!
coherent state and (0) denotes the initial state of central qubits to be considered a pure
state as |++−|−−
√ . By taking the mentioned initial state of the two-qubit system, the
2
reduced density matrix can be obtained through the evaluation of the coupled differ-
ential equations (6). In Fig. 3, we plot the time dependence of concurrence for the case
N → ∞ when the magnetic fields change in time according to the time-dependent
scenarios defined in Eq. (6). We can see how a time-dependent magnetic field may
deeply modify the time behavior of the quantum correlations arising between the two
spins in the system. This means that appropriately engineered magnetic fields may be
used to control (generate, destroy, freeze) quantum correlations between the two sub-
systems so as to manipulate them for several tasks. In Fig. 3, we plot the concurrence
versus the time t in the strong coupling regime g(= 1)
J = g0 = (= 0.05) with
different values of the intensity of magnetic field and fixed amplitude α = 0.5. The
concurrence grows with time and reaches a maximum value, and when time goes on,
it decays to zero. For long time, one can see an oscillatory behavior of entanglement;
however, it is amplified and the period of oscillations becomes large when the intensity
of the external magnetic field increases.

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Entanglement dynamics of two coupled spins interacting… Page 13 of 16 306

4 Conclusion

In conclusion, we have investigated the entanglement dynamics of two initially maxi-

mally entangled central spins interacting with a spin bath, while central spins are driven
by two external magnetic fields of exponential functions of time. The evolution of the
concurrence for the central spins is given under the condition that two external fields
are the same. For this model, in both of the strong and weak coupling regimes, the spins
are always maximally entangled and decoherence will never emerge when we choose
two central spins are prepared in the state |+−−|−+
√ . For other cases, when the system
2
parameters, g0 ,  and 0 , get the values comparable to the coupling coefficients of
bath spins, entanglement decay or death and birth appears. We also showed how by
considering the case of weak coupling regime and for large amplitude of spin coher-
ent state of bath the entanglement behavior of the state |++−|−−
√ does not change
2
in time and may lead to the pointer states that do not correspond to the eigenstates
of the system–environment interaction. It is shown that the entanglement generation
and decay depend on the number of environment spins, the coupling strength between
the central spin system and the environment as well as between bath spins, the initial
state of the central spin system, and the magnetic field intensity. In the absence of a
magnetic field as well as the small values of β, decoherence of the central spins is fast
and irreversible. Strong magnetic field or higher order of the coherent state amplitude
results in an effective decoupling of the central spins from the bath and suppression
of decoherence. Weaker magnetic field reduces but does not eliminate decoherence.
The lost entanglement will never be recovered when the number of bath spins exceeds
a critical value at weak coupling regime g(0.05) g0 =  = 0 (= 1) and small
amplitude α = 1 (Fig. 1c1 ). At the same situation, i.e., N = 100, the stronger the
coupling between the bath spins, the slower the entanglement declines (Fig. 2c2 ). In
addition, for a ferromagnetic case, the time-distribution of the peaks of the concur-
rence is almost same as the antiferromagnetic coupling between two central spins
and the amplitudes of the peak are dominated by the number of bath spins. When
the bath spins coupling is large (g = 0.5) or when the number of the environment
spins is not too large N = 10, the evolution of entanglement exhibits the behavior of
periodic oscillations (Fig. 1a2 ). Only when the bath spins coupling is weak enough or
the spin environment is large, the oscillations will disappear. Overall, our results not
only are interesting for understanding the effects of the environmental construction
(coupling coefficients of bath spins and the initial state of bath) on the entanglement
of two coupled central qubits, but also offer the possibility for protecting, stabilizing
and amplifying it through an appropriate initial state of spin coherent state for the
bath and employing an exponential function of a time-variable magnetic field one can
dramatically change the main features of the decoherence process. Based on Figs. 1
and 2, we have plotted the concurrence, obtained from the solutions of Eq. (6) for,
respectively, fixed magnetic field and fixed coherent state amplitude with N = 10, 50
and 100 in both cases. We see that for small values of the coupling constant, the
concurrence decays from its initial maximum value Cmax = 1 and then vanishes at
a certain moment of time depending on the numbers of bath spins. For sufficiently
large g, the concurrence decays less, displaying fast oscillations, and at long times,

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306 Page 14 of 16 A. Dehghani et al.

its average converges to certain asymptotic values which increase with the strength of
the magnetic field. We hope that our investigation on this spin–spin model with non-
uniform coupling will increase the understandings on the dynamics of a quantum open
system and is useful for guiding experimental simulation of the spin environment. The
next step may consist in considering more central qubits, assuming the other initial
system states and investigating whether the above results still hold.

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