Natural capacity of a system of two two-level atoms as a quantum information channel

Abstract

A system of two closely spaced atoms interacting through a vacuum electromagnetic field is considered. It is demonstrated that radiative decay in such a system resulting from photon exchange gives rise to a definite amount of information related to interatomic communication. Joint distributions of detection probabilities of atomic quanta and the corresponding amount of communication information are calculated.

8 pages, 2 figures, source in RevTeX, figures in PostScript