Dynamics of atom–atom correlations in the Fermi problem

We present a detailed perturbative study of the dynamics of several types of atom–atom correlations in the famous Fermi problem. This is an archetypal model to study micro-causality in the quantum domain, where two atoms, one initially excited and the other prepared in its ground state, interact with the vacuum electromagnetic field. The excitation can be transferred to the second atom via a flying photon, and various kinds of quantum correlations between the two are generated during this process. Among these, prominent examples are given by entanglement, quantum discord and non-local correlations. The aim of this paper is to analyze the role of the light cone in the emergence of such correlations