Entanglement swapping between spacelike separated atoms
arXiv:0807.2711 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.78.052314
Abstract
We show a mechanism that projects a pair of neutral two-level atoms from an initially uncorrelated state to a maximally entangled state while they remain spacelike separated. The atoms begin both excited in a common electromagnetic vacuum, and the radiation is collected with a partial Bell-state analyzer. If the interaction time is short enough and a certain two-photon Bell state is detected after the interaction, a high degree of entanglement, even maximal, can be generated while one atom is outside the light cone of the other, for arbitrary large interatomic distances.
v2: version accepted in Phys. Rev. A