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Optimization of the environment for generating entanglement and spin squeezing

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2015 J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 48 115505

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 Journal of Physics B: Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics

J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 48 (2015) 115505 (10pp) doi:10.1088/0953-4075/48/11/115505

Optimization of the environment for

generating entanglement and spin
squeezing
Da Yang Tan1,2, Adam Zaman Chaudhry3 and Jiangbin Gong1,2,4
1
Department of Physics, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117542, Singapore
2
Centre for Computational Science and Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117542,
Singapore
3
School of Science & Engineering, Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), Opposite Sector
U, D.H.A, Lahore 54792, Pakistan
4
NUS Graduate School for Integrative Sciences and Engineering, Singapore 117597, Singapore

E-mail: phygj@nus.edu.sg

Received 5 February 2015, revised 19 March 2015

Accepted for publication 24 March 2015
Published 17 April 2015

Abstract
We study the concurrence of two qubits and spin squeezing of N qubits interacting with a
common environment using an exactly solvable pure dephasing model. We show that the
concurrence and spin squeezing generated via the interaction with the common environment
depends on the properties of the environment. Consequently, we optimize over the
environmental properties, and in particular the Ohmicity parameter, in order to achieve the
maximal quantum resource generation. We also show that there is a weak dependence between
the maximum concurrence and the temperature, allowing the results to be experimentally
realized in a realistic temperature regime.
Keywords: entanglement generation, spin squeezing, pure dephasing, decoherence dynamics

(Some figures may appear in colour only in the online journal)

1. Introduction tuning the system-environment coupling and the properties of

Entanglement is a resource in many areas of quantum com-
putation and communication [1] such as quantum crypto-
graphy [2, 3] and superdense coding [4]. Similarly, spin
squeezing [5, 6] has found practical uses in precision mea-
surements, such as atomic clocks [7, 8] and gravitational-
wave interferometers [9, 10]. Such practical applications and
considerations make both quantum entanglement and spin
squeezing interesting topics of study and investigation.
Unfortunately, quantum resources such as entanglement and
spin squeezing are very fragile—realistic quantum systems
interact with their environment, and this interaction generally
leads to both dissipation and decoherence which typically
destroy the precious quantum resources [11, 12]. It comes as
no surprise then that the environment has largely been con-
sidered a nuisance for quantum technologies. However,
recently it has been realized that the system-environment
interaction can be used to generate quantum resources by
the environment. These techniques fall under the umbrella of
‘reservoir engineering’ [13–18] and they have been used
experimentally to generate superposition states in atomic
ensembles [19], superconducting circuits [20], and trapped
ions [21, 22]. In particular, it has been found in the past
decade that entanglement can be established for two inde-
pendent qubits interacting with a common environment
[12, 23, 24]. Such kind of environment induced entanglement
has also been shown to have applications in quantum control
of two-dimensional quantum system [25], entanglement of
two mode squeezed states [26, 27], entanglement between
two qubits in a common environment with a gap [28],
entanglement of charged qubits [29] and teleportation of
charge qubits [30]. Similarly, the environment is typically
thought to have a detrimental effect on spin squeezing [31–
34], as a result of which various techniques such as dynamical
decoupling have been proposed to protect spin squeezed
states (see, for instance, [35]). However, it has also been

0953-4075/15/115505+10$33.00 1 © 2015 IOP Publishing Ltd Printed in the UK

J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 48 (2015) 115505 D Y Tan et al

shown recently that by designing suitable dissipative model to N identical two-level systems, and we find that
dynamics, spin squeezing can be generated [36, 37] even in again there exists an optimal value of the Ohmicity para-
steady state [38]. meter s. As before, we also investigate the effect of the
It is clear that the amount of decoherence experienced other parameters such as the system-environment coupling
by a quantum system depends on the properties of the strength.
environment. Interestingly, it has been found that not all This paper is organized as follows. In section 2 we
environments induce complete decoherence for a single introduce our basic model, discuss the entanglement dynam-
qubit (see, for instance, [39]). For some particular forms of ics of two qubits interacting with a common environment, and
the environment—technically speaking, for particular spec- show the existence of optimized entanglement with respect to
tral densities of the environment—we can have limited variation of the environment properties. In section 3 we fur-
decoherence, even for very long times. Moreover, the ther extend our model to many qubits and we investigate the
properties of the environment that optimize single-qubit
role of the same environment towards the optimization of spin
coherence have been investigated [40]. On the other hand,
squeezing. We then conclude our findings in section 4. Some
we know that entanglement and spin squeezing, as the
of the more technical details are deferred to the appendices.
phenomenon of entanglement sudden death illustrates, are
different from single-qubit coherence. Since interaction with
a common environment can also generate entanglement and
spin squeezing, it is then interesting to understand how the
2. Entanglement
spectral properties of a common environment lead to the
generation of entanglement and spin squeezing and if there
2.1. The Model
are any regimes where the environment optimizes the
amount of entanglement and spin squeezing. While entan- We begin by considering two qubits interacting with a com-
glement dynamics have been studied before (see, in parti- mon bosonic environment. The total system-environment
cular, [24] and [28]), a study of what kind of environment Hamiltonian is given by (taking  = 1 throughout)
optimizes the entanglement and spin squeezing generated
has, to the best of our knowledge, not been performed H = HS + HB + H I
before. Such a study may serve as a benchmark for further ω 0 (1)
investigations on the generation of entanglement or spin
=
2
(
σz + σz(2) + ) ∑ω k b k† b k
k
squeezing via reservoir engineering.
We start by considering a system of two qubits, initially + ( σz(1) + σz(2) ) ∑(g b *
k k )
+ gk b k† , (1)
in a pure product state, interacting with a common envir- k

onment. Since the dephasing time is generally much shorter

where the first, second and third terms are the system,
than the relaxation time scale, we initially consider only a
environment and interaction terms respectively. ω 0 is the
pure dephasing model. The environment is modeled as a
energy difference between the two level states in the qubit
collection of harmonic oscillators. The effect of this envir-
(assumed, for simplicity, to be the same for both qubits), and
onment on the dynamics of the two qubits is entirely
σz is the standard Pauli matrix. The second term describes the
encapsulated by the spectral density. The spectral density is
environment as a collection of harmonic oscillators. The last
then modeled, as is commonly done, as an Ohmic-type
term describes the interaction between the two qubits and the
spectral density which follows the power law J (ω) ∼ ωs ,
environment. We note that our system-Hamiltonian is a
where ω denotes the frequency of the modes of the envir-
simple extension of the widely used spin-boson model
onment. Crucially, we then find that there exist optimal
extended to two qubits but restricted to pure dephasing
values of s for which the entanglement can be optimized
[41, 42]. We can consider pure dephasing if we consider the
due to the interplay between the decoherence and the
dynamics within a time scale much shorter than the relaxation
indirect atom–atom interaction induced by the common
time scale of the system. The advantage of considering only
environment. In particular, while having a super-Ohmic
pure dephasing to begin with is that such a model can by
environment generally helps in generating entanglement,
solved exactly. Later on, we will relax this pure dephasing
having too large a value of the Ohmicity parameter s is not
assumption and investigate how this changes our qualitative
beneficial either. We also investigate the effect of the sys-
conclusions.
tem-environment coupling strength, the cutoff frequency
Given the system-environment Hamiltonian, we solve for
and the temperature to find out how the variation of these
the system dynamics given any initial system-environment
parameters affects the optimal spectral density of the
state. Here, for simplicity, we take the usual system-envir-
environment. To further generalize our results, we include a
onment product state, that is, ρ (0) = ρS (0) ⊗ ρB , as the
term in our system-environment model that leads to
relaxation as well, and we show that our qualitative results initial state and we assume the environment to be in the
are largely unaffected. We also show that for a slightly thermal bath state ρB = e−βHB Z B with β the inverse tem-
mixed initial two-qubit state, entanglement can still be perature and Z B = TrB [e−βHB ]. Starting from this initial sys-
generated due to the interaction with the environment. To tem-environment state, we can show (see appendix A for
investigate the generation of spin squeezing, we extend our details) that the system density matrix at time t can be written

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J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 48 (2015) 115505 D Y Tan et al

as The spectral density J (ω) is typically modeled using a power

ωs
⎡⎣ ρ (t ) ⎤⎦ = ⎡⎣ ρS (0) ⎤⎦ e−iω 0 t (k′+ l ′− k− l ) 2 law such that J (ω) = g s−1 F (ω , ωc ) where g is the system-
ωc
S k′ ,l′ ;k,l k′ ,l′ ;k,l
environment coupling strength. It is important to note that
× e−iΔ (t )(k′ l ′− kl ) 2 since we have found an exact solution for the dephasing
2
× e−(k+ l − k′− l ′) γ (t ) 4 , (2) dynamics of our two-qubit system, we need not restrict
ourselves to the regime g ≪ 1. By tuning the Ohmicity
where [ρS (t )]k ′ , l ′ ; k, l ≡ 〈k′, l′∣ ρS (t ) ∣ k , l〉, and the indices k parameter s, we can go from the sub-Ohmic regime (s < 1)
and l are defined via σz(1) ∣ k , l〉 = k ∣ k , l〉 and [43] to the Ohmic (s = 1) [11, 44] and super-Ohmic (s > 1)
σz(2) ∣ k , l〉 = l ∣ k , l〉. [45] regimes. Since physically the distribution of the
From this solution for the system density matrix, we can frequency spectrum should be bounded, a cut off function
immediately deduce that some two-qubit initial states do not F (ω , ωc ) is introduced with ωc being the cutoff frequency.
evolve. For example, the state ∣ 1, 1〉 remains as the state For low frequencies ω, this cutoff function plays a negligible
∣ 1, 1〉. Similarly, any state of the form role while it suppresses the contribution of frequencies
c1 ∣ 1, −1〉 + c2 ∣− 1, 1〉, c1 and c2 being complex coeffi- beyond the cutoff frequency ωc . In the literature [11],
cients, does not evolve either. This is expected since, from the different forms of the cutoff function are commonly used.
form of the total system-environment Hamiltonian, these For concreteness, we choose the commonly used exponential
states are part of the decoherence-free subspace. To talk about cutoff function F (ω , ωc ) = exp(−ω ωc ), although we
generation of entanglement via the environment, it is then emphasize that our qualitative results do not depend on the
clear that we should first choose a separable two-qubit state choice of the cutoff function (we present an example in
since we want the environment to generate entanglement for appendix B). It is also important to note that the spectral
us. Second, the initial two-qubit state should not be part of a density, and in particular the Ohmicity parameter s, can be
decoherence-free subspace. Given these restrictions, we start tuned experimentally, as proposed, for instance, in [46] for
our analysis by choosing the initial state to be ultracold atoms. In particular, [47] has shown that by tuning
ρS (0) = ∣+ , +〉〈+ , +∣, where σx ∣+〉 = ∣+〉. Then, the system the scattering length between the bosons in an environment
density matrix at time t is given by consisting of a Bose–Einstein condensate, one can control the
⎛ 1 e−iω0 t e−γ (t ) − iΔ (t ) e−iω0 t e−γ (t ) − iΔ (t ) e−4γ (t ) − 2iω0 t ⎞
Ohmicity of the environment.
⎜ ⎟
1 ⎜ e iω0 t e−γ (t ) + iΔ (t ) 1 1 e iω0 t e−γ (t ) + iΔ (t ) ⎟
−
ρs (t ) =
4 ⎜ e iω0 t e−γ (t ) + iΔ (t ) 1 1 e−2iω0 t e−γ (t ) + iΔ (t ) ⎟ 2.2. Dynamics
⎜ −4γ (t ) + 2iω t ⎟
⎝ e 0 e iω0 t e−γ (t ) − iΔ (t ) e iω0 t e−γ (t ) − iΔ (t ) 1 ⎠
As stated in the introduction, our goal is to tune the spectral
(3)
density of the environment so as to generate the maximum
with possible two-qubit entanglement. This is not an easy problem
since the entanglement generated depends on various para-
2
4 gk meters such as s, ωc , g and β. As a measure of the entan-
Δ (t ) = ∑ ( sin ω k t − ω k t ), (4) glement, we use concurrence C(t) [48]. Further complicating
ω k2
k
the problem is the fact that, unfortunately, finding the con-
and currence analytically for a two-qubit state is not possible
generally. In particular, the density matrix given by
2 equation (3) is not the so-called X state generally. However,
4 gk ⎛ βω k ⎞ we can gain some insight as follows. Examining the long time
γ (t ) = ∑
ω k2
[ 1 − cos( ω k t ) ] coth ⎜⎝ 2 ⎠
⎟. (5)
limits of equations (4) and (5), we find that, for long time t,
k
∞ J (ω) ⎡ 2 ⎤
Here, the factor Δ (t ) is due to the indirect interaction of the γ (t ) = ∫0 dω 2 ⎢
ω ⎣
1 + βω ⎥,
e − 1⎦
(8)
qubits in the presence of the common bosonic environment,
while γ (t ) describes the decoherence induced by the π J (ω) ∞ J (ω)
environment. Δ (t ) = lim
2 ω→ 0 ω
−t ∫0 dω
ω
. (9)
It is at this point that the spectral density J (ω) is intro-
duced via the substitution These expressions give us hope. For a super-Ohmic
∞
2
∑k 4 ∣ gk ∣ → ∫ dω J (ω) δ (ω k − ω) [11], thus replacing environment such that s > 2, the decoherence factor γ (t ) is
0
the discrete summations in equations (4) and (5) by a con- bounded. On the other hand, Δ (t ) does not decrease to zero
tinuous spectrum of environmental frequencies ω. Conse- either. This means that we expect the Ohmicity parameter s to
quently, Δ (t ) and γ (t ) are then be given by play a key role in the generation of the bipartite entanglement.
∞
As such, we investigate the concurrence C(t) against time for
sin ωt − ωt
Δ (t ) = ∫0 dω J (ω)
ω2
, (6) different Ohmicity parameters, keeping the rest of the
parameters constant. An illustrative result is shown in figure 1.
∞ coth ( ).
βω It is clear from this figure that for Ohmic and sub-Ohmic
2
γ (t ) = ∫0 dω J (ω) [1 − cos(ωt ) ]
ω2
(7) environments, the generation of entanglement is sub-optimal.
The entanglement initially increases due to the effect of the

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J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 48 (2015) 115505 D Y Tan et al

Figure 1. Behavior of the concurrence as a function of time with

s = 0.5 (solid, black line) and s = 1 (dashed, red line). Inset shows the Figure 2. Maximum concurrence with varying coupling strength g
concurrence at s = 4 (dashed–dotted, orange line) and s = 6 (short- and Ohmicity parameter s. Here ω 0 = 0.1, ωc = 2 and β = 1.
dashed, blue line) respectively. Recall that we are setting  = 1
throughout. We set ω 0 = 0.1, and the rest of the parameters are given
by ωc = 20 , β = 1 and g = 0.01. This means that if ω 0 = 1 GHz ,
then ωc = 200 GHz , and so on. g, it should be emphasized, is
dimensionless.

indirect qubit–qubit interaction Δ (t ), but soon the decoher-

ence factor takes over and the entanglement decays to zero for
long times due to the fact that the decoherence factor γ (t )
does not saturate. On the other hand, for super-Ohmic
environments (namely s = 4 and s = 6 in figure 1),
considerably more entanglement is generated. Furthermore,
while the entanglement keeps oscillating due to the time
dependence of Δ (t ) at long times, the entanglement still
persists at long times. We emphasize that this entanglement
generation is solely due to the interaction of the qubits with
the environment. It should also be noted that the frequency of
the oscillations in the entanglement dynamics increases with Figure 3. Variation of γ (t ) with respect to Ohmicity parameter s at
increasing s. finite long time t = 500 from s = 3 to s = 3.2. The inset shows the
Another very interesting feature is displayed in figure 1. variation between s = 1.2 to s = 6. Here ω 0 = 0.1, ωc = 2, β = 1 and
Namely, it shows that the concurrence is less for s = 6 g = 0.005.
compared to s = 4. This motivates us to find the value of s that
maximizes the concurrence generated. In figure 2, we show entanglement to occur. To investigate this issue further, we
how the concurrence changes as s and the coupling strength g find that at long times, with our choice of the spectral density
are varied. We find that the maximum possible concurrence is
obtained at around s = 3.1 for a particular temperature of ∂γ ( t ) 2 ⎡ ⎛ 1 ⎞
β = 1 and cutoff frequency ωc = 2. It is interesting to note = ⎢ (1 − s) ζ ⎜ s − 1, 1 + ⎟
∂s ( βωc )2 ⎣ ⎝ βωc ⎠
that across most of the coupling strength g the maximum
possible concurrence always occurs in the same regime of the ⎛ 1 ⎞
Ohmicity parameter. This is in line with our expectation that + βωc ψ (0) (s − 1) ζ ⎜ s − 1, 1 + ⎟
⎝ βωc ⎠
the Ohmicity parameter s is the key parameter in the opti-
mization of the generation of entanglement. Moreover, for
⎛ 1 ⎞⎤
+ βωc ζ ⎜ s , 1 + ⎟⎥ + ψ (0) (s − 1), (10)
large s, we observe that the maximum concurrence is sig- ⎝ βωc ⎠⎦
nificantly lower especially in the high system-environment
coupling strength regime. This can be explained using where ψ (0) (x ) and ζ (x, y ) are the digamma function and
figure 3, where it is observed that the finite long time value of generalized Riemann zeta function respectively. By setting
γ (t ) does not decrease monotonically with s, but rather dis- the derivative to be zero, we find that the values of s that gives
plays a minimum at around s = 3.1 before increasing with minimum γ (t ) always ranges between 2.5 ⩽ s ⩽ 4.5 for
larger s. Hence, the suppression of the decoherence term at varying range of βωc . Hence, while it is expected that the
this particular value of s will allow a higher degree of optimized values of s to vary somewhat with βωc , the range of

4
J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 48 (2015) 115505
Figure 4. Variation of maximum concurrence Cmax with respect to
Ohmicity parameter s from s = 1 to s = 4 for varying values of ε.
Other parameters used are ωc = 50 , ω 0 = 0.1, β = 1 and g = 0.01.
Here the lines showing the pure dephasing case and ε = 0.01 are
almost indistinguishable, while the difference between the pure
dephasing case and ε = 0.08 is also not very appreciable.
s that yields the maximum degree of entanglement is of a
limited range. We also note in passing that although ωc affects
very significantly the time at which the maximum entangle-
ment is generated, the maximum entanglement itself is
essentially independent of the cutoff frequency (for an
illustration, refer to appendix C).
We now further generalize our results beyond the pure
dephasing case. We do this by adding a ‘tunneling’ term to
the Hamiltonian of our two qubits so that the total Hamilto-
nian becomes
ω 0 (1) ε (1)
H=
2
(
σz + σz(2) +
2
)
σ x + σ x(2) + ( ) ∑ω k b k† b k
k
+ ( σz(1) + σz(2) ) ∑(g b *
k k + gk b k† ),
k what we observed previously. In the Ohmic case shown in
(11)
where 2ε (σx(1) + σx(2) ) is what we refer to as the tunnelling
term. The dynamics of the two qubits under this Hamiltonian
can be solved numerically using a master equation based on
time-dependent perturbation theory (see, for instance,
[49, 50]), and we can therefore again optimize the
entanglement generated. As seen in figure 4, the value of
the Ohmicity parameter for which the generated entangle-
ment is maximized does not change greatly as the tunneling
term becomes more dominant. In fact, for ω 0 ≈ ε , we find
that the optimal value of s is very much in the same regime
as we predicted before.
The entanglement generated also depends, as we noted
before, on the initial state. We now aim to see if entanglement
can be generated if we start off with a mixed state instead.
This is important because, in practice, we deal with at least
slightly mixed states. Therefore, unlike the initial two-qubit
state ∣+ , +〉〈+ , +∣ that we chose before, we now consider
5
D Y Tan et al
Figure 5. Evolution of concurrence for s = 1 (solid, black line) and
s = 3 (dashed, red line). We set ω 0 = 0.1 and use ωc = 20 for s = 1
and ωc = 2 for s = 3. Also, we have g = 0.005 and β = 1, and
p1 = p3 = 0.9, p2 = p4 = 0.1. We note that for the sub-Ohmic case,
s = 0.5, the concurrence remains zero throughout, hence is not
plotted here. The inset shows the long time evolution for s = 3. Here
we note that there is a finite time interval between each cycle of
revival of entanglement.
instead the initial two-qubit state
(
ρS (0) = p1 ∣+〉〈+∣ + p2 ∣−〉〈−∣ )
(
⊗ p3 ∣+〉〈+∣ + p4 ∣−〉〈−∣ , ) (12)
where p1, p2, p3 and p4 are probabilities such that
p1 + p2 = 1 and p3 + p4 = 1 and the states ∣ ± 〉 are defined
as σx ∣ ± 〉 = ± ∣ ± 〉 as before. We consider the case where
the qubits are slightly mixed, so we choose p1 = p3 = 0.9.
We now observe that in the sub-Ohmic regime, the
environment is no longer capable of producing any sort of
entanglement at any time. This is in immediate contrast to
figure 5, the entanglement is similar to what we observed
before except that less entanglement is generated compared to
the former case. We also note that there is some delayed
generation of entanglement as compared to the pure state
case. In fact, for the super-Ohmic case with s = 3, it is found
that there are finite periodic windows where the two qubits are
disentangled, as seen in figure 5. The qubits undergo periodic
entanglement and disentanglement in a super-Ohmic environ-
ment. Once again, the entanglement generated for the mixed
initial state with the super-Ohmic environment is smaller than
to the pure initial state we considered before.
To further analyze the effect of changing the Ohmicity
parameter, we investigate the behavior of the purity of the
two-qubit state as shown in figure 6. While the purity initially
decreases, we see that the purity saturates at a fixed value for
s > 2. This is in contrast to s = 0.5 and s = 1 case where the
purity eventually decreases to a much lower value. Again, this
is because the decoherence factor itself saturates at long times
for s > 2. In fact, a straightforward calculation of the purity P
J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 48 (2015) 115505
Figure 6. Evolution of purity for the mixed state given by
equation (12). Parameters used are same as figure 5.
Figure 7. Variation of maximum concurrence with respect to β for
s = 3.1. The inset shows the variation of maximum concurrence with
respect to β and s. Here g = 0.03, ω 0 = 0.1 and ωc = 2 . If ω 0 is in the
GHz regime (for instance, trapped ions), then β = 1 corresponds to a
temperature in the μK regime.
(t) gives
P (t ) = Tr ⎡⎣ ρs2 (t ) ⎤⎦ = a + be−4γ (t ) + ce−8γ (t ) ,
where 0.25 ⩽ P (t ) ⩽ 1 with P (t ) = 0.25 (P (t ) = 1) a
completely mixed (pure) state, and a + b + c = 1 are
constants that are dependent on the initial state chosen. We
hence observe that regardless of the initial state that was
chosen, the decoherence factor γ (t ) will always lead to a
decrease in P(t). However, since γ (t ) saturates to a non-zero
value in the long time limit for s > 2, we can observe a
saturation in the value of purity for s > 2. Notice that the long
time purity for s = 3 is greater than that for s = 5 as we can
expect from our analysis of the pure initial state.
To conclude this section, let us discuss the dependence of
the maximum concurrence on the temperature. From the inset
of figure 7, we see that high temperatures will, as expected,
lead to a small maximum concurrence. Interestingly, for a
range of values of s and β, appreciable concurrence can be
D Y Tan et al
obtained. In particular, we observe that in the regime between
s = 3 and s = 4, the maximum entanglement obtained saturates
quickly as we increase β. This is in contrast to the other
regime where the maximum concurrence remains low
throughout. As an illustration, we have plotted the case of
s = 3.1 in figure 7. It is then clear that the maximum con-
currence reaches some saturation value fairly quickly.
Importantly, for β > 1, we already achieve excellent entan-
glement generation, illustrating that we do not need extremely
low temperatures.
3. Spin squeezing
3.1. The model
We now extend the model that we used previously to N
identical two-level atoms with collective spin Jz = ∑iN=1 σz(i) 2
interacting with a common bosonic environment. The total
system-environment Hamiltonian can then be written as
H = HS + HB + H I + HOAT
= ω 0 Jz + χJz2 + ∑ω k b k† b k (14)
k
(
+ 2Jz ∑ gk* b k + gk b k† ,) (15)
k
where ω 0 is the energy bias, HOAT = χJz2 is the well known
one-axis twisting (OAT) Hamiltonian [51], and HB is the
collection of the bosonic modes that make up the environ-
ment. Note that, in contrast with the previous section, a direct
interaction term between the qubits has been included via χJz2.
It is known that the one-axis twisting Hamiltonian HOAT
acting alone generates spin squeezing proportional to N 2 3.
However, the interaction with the environment greatly
influences the dynamics, and degree of squeezing that is
possible significantly deteriorates. However, it has also been
shown that the environment can actually also assist in
generating spin squeezed states [36–38]. The purpose of
(13) including the direct interaction term HOAT is to compare the
squeezing generated in the presence of this term as well as the
environment, and the spin squeezing generated solely by the
environment. Our goal is to see how the environment
parameters can be optimized to generate the maximum
possible spin squeezing. This should be compared to what we
performed in the previous section where we optimized the
environment parameters to generate two-qubit entanglement.
It should be noted that there is a connection between spin
squeezing and entanglement. In particular, [52] has shown
that for any arbitrary symmetric multiqubit state, spin
squeezing implies the existence of pairwise entanglement
between the qubits. Therefore, we expect the insights that we
gained in the previous section to be useful here as well.
We begin by finding the reduced density matrix of the
system of N qubits which can be done in a very similar way to
what we did before for two-qubits. We find that the reduced
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J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 48 (2015) 115505
Figure 8. Variation of the optimized squeezing parameter with the
Ohmicity parameter s in the presence of the OAT Hamiltonian
(circle, blue dotted lines) and without the OAT Hamiltonian (square,
black solid lines). Here N = 10, g = 0.05, ω 0 = 0.1, ωc = 10 and
β = 1. For the OAT case, χ = 1.
density matrix elements of the system are now given by
⎡⎣ ρ (t ) ⎤⎦ = ⎡⎣ ρ (0) ⎤⎦ e−iω 0 t (m − n) e−iΔ (t ) ( m2 − n2) e−γ (t )(m − n)2
s mn s mn
(16)
with Δ (t ) and γ (t ) given by equations (4) and (5) of the
previous section respectively, and the indices m and n are
given by Jz ∣ m〉 = m ∣ m〉 and Jz ∣ n〉 = n ∣ n〉. As is usual in
investigating the generation of spin squeezing, we choose the
π
initial state to be the spin-coherent state ∣ ψ 〉 = e−i 2 Jy ∣ N 2〉.
To quantify spin squeezing, we use the spin squeezing
parameter ξS2 introduced by Kitagawa and Ueda [51] given by
ξS2 = 2
( ),
min Jn2⃗⊥
(17)
N spin squeezing within a fixed time scale. For such a case, if g
where Jn⊥⃗ is the spin perpendicular to the mean spin direction
of the spin and the minimization is taken over all possible n⊥⃗ .
The details of how this calculation can be carried out for any
spin state can be found in the appendix D. It is important to
note that a smaller value of ξS2 indicates a greater degree of
spin squeezing. In particular, in the presence of only the OAT
Hamiltonian, ξS2 ∼ 1 N 2 3.
3.2. Optimization of spin squeezing
Based on our results in the previous section, we expect that
the Ohmicity parameter plays the key role in the optimization
of spin squeezing. Therefore, we concentrate on the role of s.
As illustrated in figure 8, we again find that there exists an
optimal value of s for which the spin squeezing is maximized.
We observe that for a fixed temperature β = 1, if there is no
direct interaction between the atoms via the OAT Hamilto-
nian, the optimal squeezing occurs at around s = 2.5, while
the addition of OAT Hamiltonian pushes the squeezing
parameter to be at the minimum at around s = 2. Interestingly,
the presence of the OAT Hamiltonian can have a negligible
7
D Y Tan et al
influence on the squeezing generated as seen for the s > 2.5
regime. Thus it is really for the s < 2.5 regimes that the OAT
Hamiltonian gives spin squeezing that cannot be generated by
the environment itself. This can be explained simply by
noting that in the short time scale, the value of the deco-
herence factor γ (t ) increases with s, and thus the value of γ (t )
in the sub-Ohmic and Ohmic regimes is smaller than that for
the super-Ohmic regimes. The presence of the OAT Hamil-
tonian causes the time required to achieve maximum
squeezing to shorten considerably, therefore this allows sig-
nificant squeezing to happen in the sub-Ohmic and the Ohmic
regimes before the onset of decoherence. It should also be
noted that the maximum spin squeezing in the presence of the
one-axis Hamiltonian does not differ very appreciably from
the maximum spin squeezing generated by the environment
alone.
Let us now also comment on the role of the system-
environment coupling strength g for the generation of spin
squeezing. In this case, we find that, interestingly, very small
values of g lead to the greatest spin squeezing. In fact, the
value of the spin squeezing parameter approaches the OAT
value as the value of coupling g decreases for sub-Ohmic,
Ohmic and super-Ohmic environments, regardless if there is
OAT Hamiltonian term. This is an interesting result as this
illustrates that the indirect atom–atom interaction Δ (t ) can
have the same performance in generating spin squeezing as
the OAT Hamiltonian. However, it is important to note that
decreasing g also has the effect of lengthening the time scale
to reach the minimum possible squeezing parameter. This
limits the practicality of such results since in such long time
scales, not only is the validity of our pure dephasing model in
question, but also the effects of atomic losses become sig-
nificant and thus this inhibits the validity of our results.
Therefore, we instead recast the problem of the optimization
of spin squeezing with respect to g. We now study the rela-
tionship between the coupling strength g and the degree of
is too small, the squeezing generated at the end of this time is
too small, while if g is too large, decoherence effects are too
dominant. Therefore, we now do expect an optimal value of g
for the generation of spin squeezing. Figure 9 shows the
variation of minimum squeezing parameter in an arbitrary
finite end time T = 1 using different coupling strengths g. In
this case, we can clearly see that there exist an optimal value
of coupling strength g such that the minimum squeezing
parameter can be reached before the time T. To sum up,
increasing the coupling strength g has dual effects on the
squeezing: firstly speeding up the time to reach maximum
squeezing; secondly, reducing the degree of squeezing that
can be achieved. Thus, the effective generation of spin
squeezing is a competition between these two factors.
4. Conclusion
We have investigated the effect of different spectral densities
on the environment-generated entanglement and spin
squeezing by solving for the dynamics of pure dephasing
J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 48 (2015) 115505 D Y Tan et al

For our case, we find that

1 (1)
A1 (t ) =
2
(
σz + σz(2) ) ∑(b †
k α k (t ) − b k α k* (t ) , )
k
i
A 2 (t ) = −
2
(
1 + σz(1) σz(2) Δ (t ), )
where

α k (t ) =
(
2gk 1 − eiω k t ),
ωk
2
4 gk
Δ (t ) = ∑ ( sin( ω k t ) − ω k t ).
k ω k2

The total unitary operator is then given by

Figure 9. Variation of minimum ξS2 (t ) with coupling strength g. Here
N = 10, ω 0 = 0.1, s = 2.5 and β = 1 and we consider the spin
U (t ) = e−iω 0 ( σz )
(1)
+ σz(2) t 2 −iH B t
e UI (t ). (A.3)
squeezing generated at time T = 1.
We express the system density matrix in the eigenbasis of the
σz(1) and σz(2) operators, that is, the ∣ k , l〉 basis introduced in the
model. The key insight is that we have found that there exists
main text. In this basis
a optimal value of the Ohmicity parameter s where the
amount of concurrence will be maximized and this is largely ⎡⎣ ρ (t ) ⎤⎦ = k ′ , l′ ρS ( t ) k , l .
S k′ ,l′ ;k,l
due to the nonlinear dependence of the decoherence factor
with s. We also consider the initial two-qubit state to be Since ρS (t ) = TrS, B [ρ (t )], where ρ (t ) is the total density
mixed and we find that it is possible to generate entanglement matrix, and ρ (t ) = U (t ) ρ (0) U † (t ), we can write
in this case also. Similarly, the interplay between the atom-
atom interaction and the decoherence at different values of s
⎡⎣ ρ (t ) ⎤⎦
S = TrS, B ⎡⎣ U † (t ) Pkl, k′ l ′ U (t ) ρ (0)⎤⎦ , (A.4)
k′ ,l′ ;k,l
leads to the optimization of s for spin squeezing. Our study where Pkl, k ′ l ′ = ∣ k , l〉〈k′, l′∣. Here we trace over the system
should be useful for designing environments that generated and bath modes to obtain the matrix element of the system
entanglement and spin squeezing. density matrix. Using the unitary operator U(t) that we have
calculated before, we find that
U † (t ) Pkl, k′ l ′ U (t ) = eiω 0 (k+ l − k′− l ′) t 2eiΔ (t )(kl − k′ l ′) 2
Appendix A. Derivation of the system density matrix
×e r
( )
− ∑ br† α r (t ) − br α r* (t ) (k + l − k ′− l ′) 2
Pkl, k′ l ′,
To solve for the dynamics for the case of our pure dephasing
two-qubit Hamiltonian, it is useful to first transform the (A.5)
Hamiltonian to the interaction picture. This is defined via where we have changed the dummy summation index to r to
HI (t ) = U0† (t ) HI U0 (t ) with U0 (t ) = e−i(HS + HB ) t . It is then prevent any confusion. Since ρ (0) = ρS (0) ⊗ ρB , we find
straightforward to show that that
⎡⎣ ρ (t ) ⎤⎦ = ⎡⎣ ρS (0) ⎤⎦ e−iω 0 (k′+ l ′− k− l ) t 2
(
H I (t ) = σz(1) + σz(2) )∑ (g b e *
k k
−iω k t
)
+ gk b k† eiω k t . (A.1) S k′ ,l′ ;k,l k′ ,l′ ;k,l
k
× e−iΔ (t )(k′ l ′− kl ) 2 TrB
Now we aim to find the time evolution operator UI (t) that × ⎡⎣ e−R kl, k ′ l ′ (t ) ρB ⎤⎦ , (A.6)
corresponds to HI(t). From Magnus expansion
and we have defined
⎡∞ ⎤ 1 † *
Rkl, k ′ l ′ (t ) = 2 (k + l − k′ − l′) ∑r (br αr (t ) − br αr (t )). To
UI (t ) = exp ⎢ ∑Ai (t )⎥ , (A.2) simplify the remaining trace, we write
⎢⎣ i = 1 ⎥⎦
∼ (t ) − b α
Rkl, k ′ l ′ (t ) = ∑r (br† α ∼*
r r r (t )) with
∼
αr (t ) = (k + l − k′ − l′) αr (t ) 2. Using the identity
where 2
TrB [eAρB ] = eTrB [A ρB ] 2 , valid for any operator A which is a
t linear combination of the annihilation and creation operators,
A1 (t ) = −i ∫0 dt1H I ( t1)
we find that
1 t t1
⎡ 1 ∼ ⎤
A 2 (t ) = − ∫0 dt1 ∫0 dt2 [ H I ( t1), H I ( t2 ) ] . TrB ⎡⎣ ρB e−R kl, k ′ l ′ (t ) ⎤⎦ = ∏ exp ⎢ − α (t ) 2 ( 2n r + 1)⎥ ,
2 ⎣ 2 r ⎦
k

8
J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 48 (2015) 115505 D Y Tan et al

Figure 10. Concurrence using F (ω, ωc ) = −exp(ω ωc )2 at s = 0.5 Figure 11. Concurrence at ωc = 10 (solid, black line) and ωc = 50
(solid, black line), s = 1 (dashed, red line), s = 4 (dashed–dotted, (dash, blue line). Parameters used are s = 4, ω 0 = 0.1, β = 1
orange line) and s = 6 (short-dashed, blue line) respectively. and g = 0.01.
Parameters used are ωc = 50 , ω 0 = 0.1, β = 1 and g = 0.01.

Appendix D. Derivation of squeezing parameter ξ2S

where nr is given by the Bose–Einstein distribution.
Simplifying this, we eventually find that Here we will briefly sketch the steps to obtain the analytical
form of the squeezing parameter, ξS2 . From the definition in
⎡⎣ ρ (t ) ⎤⎦ = ⎡⎣ ρS (0) ⎤⎦ e−iω 0 t (k′+ l ′− k− l ) 2 equation (17), after some derivation (see [53] for details), the
S k′ ,l′ ;k,l k′ ,l′ ;k,l
2
spin-squeezing parameter is found to be
× e−iΔ (t )(k′ l ′− kl ) 2e−(k+ l − k′− l ′) γ (t ) 4 .
2 2 2
ξS2 =
N
Jn1⃗ + Jn22⃗ − ( Jn21⃗ − Jn22⃗ ) ( )
+ 4Cov Jn1⃗ , Jn 2⃗ ,

(D.1)
1
where Cov(Jn1⃗ , Jn2⃗ ) = 〈J J
2 n1⃗ n 2⃗
+ Jn2⃗ Jn1⃗ 〉, Jn1⃗ = J ⃗ · n1⃗ and
Appendix B. Entanglement dynamics with hard Jn2⃗ = J ⃗ · n 2⃗ , and n1⃗ and n 2⃗ form a basis orthogonal to the
cutoff function mean squeezing direction. These vectors are given by
n1⃗ = (−sin ϕ , cos ϕ , 0) (D.2)
In the main text, we highlight that the choice of cutoff
function does not affect the qualitative feature of our results. n2⃗ = (cos θ cos ϕ, cos θ sin ϕ , −sin θ ) (D.3)
Here, we illustrate this with a concrete example by replacing and θ and ϕ are the polar and azimuthal angles given by
the cutoff function F (ω , ωc ) with F (ω , ωc ) = exp(−ω ωc )2 .
Comparing figure 10 with figure 1, we see that regardless of Jz
θ = arccos (D.4)
the cutoff function, both graphs are indeed qualititatively J⃗
similar. We indeed observe the different behaviors in different
⎛ Jx ⎞
regimes, similar to the case in section 2.2. Furthermore, the ϕ = 2π − arccos ⎜ ⎟, (D.5)
concurrence for s = 4 is indeed larger than (albeit very ⎝ J ⃗ sin θ ⎠
slightly) s = 6 in this case as well. This illustrates that our
results are qualitatively independent of the choice of the where ∣ J ⃗ ∣ = 〈Jx 〉2 + 〈Jy 〉2 + 〈Jz 〉2 . In order to calculate the
cutoff function. expectation values of 〈Jn1⃗ 〉, 〈Jn2⃗ 〉, 〈Jn21⃗ 〉, 〈Jn22⃗ 〉, 〈Jn1⃗ Jn2⃗ 〉 and
〈Jn1⃗ Jn2⃗ 〉 as required in equation (D.1), we need the expectation
values of 〈Ji 〉 and 〈Ji J j 〉, with i, j = x, y, z . Further details of
these calculations can be found in [35].
Appendix C. Entanglement with respect to ωc

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