Disentanglement and decoherence without dissipation at non-zero temperatures

Decoherence is well understood, in contrast with disentanglement. According to common lore, irreversible coupling to a dissipative environment is the mechanism for loss of entanglement. Here, we show that, on the contrary, disentanglement can in fact occur at large enough temperatures T even for vanishingly small dissipation (as we have shown previously for decoherence). However, whereas the effect of T on decoherence increases exponentially with time, the effect of T on disentanglement is constant for all times, reflecting a fundamental difference between the two phenomena. Also, the possibility of disentanglement at a particular T increases with decreasing initial entanglement.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/85397/1/82_3_038112.pd