The evolution of three-body entanglement in the system of atoms interacting with coupled cavities

Abstract

In this paper we consider the situation that four identical two-level atoms are separately trapped in coupled single-mode optical cavities and each atom resonantly interacts with cavity via a one-photon hopping. The three-body entanglement dynamics in each cavity is studied. The influences of atom-cavity coupling constant on the three-body entanglement are discussed. The results obtained using the numerical method show that the three-body entanglement displays the collapse-revival phenomena when atom-cavity coupling constant is larger than a fixed value. On the other hand, the three-body entanglement is the result of the coherent superposition of the two-body entanglements.