We investigate the dynamics of two interacting two-level systems (qubits) having one of them isolated and the other coupled to a large number of modes of the quantized electromagnetic field (thermal reservoir). We consider two different models of system-reservoir interaction: i) a "microscopic" model, according to which the corresponding master equation is derived taking into account the interaction between the two subsystems (qubits); ii) a naive "phenomenological" model, in which such interaction is neglected in the derivation of the master equation. We study the dynamics of quantities such as bipartite entanglement, quantum discord and the linear entropy of the isolated qubit in both the strong and weak coupling regimes of the inter-qubit interaction. We also consider different temperatures of the reservoir. We find significant disagreements between the results obtained from the two models even in the weak coupling regime. For instance, we show that according to the phenomenological model, the isolated qubit would approach a maximally mixed state more slowly for higher temperatures (unphysical result), while the microscopic model predicts the opposite behaviour (correct result).1

We study the dynamics of two interacting two-level systems (qubits) having one of them isolated and the other coupled to a single mode electromagnetic field in a thermal state. The field plays the role of a small environment, in contrast to the usual approach of modeling an environment via a thermal reservoir with many degrees of freedom. We find the analytical solution of the proposed model, which allows us to investigate the consequences of the coupling to the small environment on characteristic quantum features of the two-qubit system. We study the time evolution of quantum entanglement and coherence, verifying the dependence on the relevant coupling constants as well as the influence of the effective temperature of the environment. Interestingly, we find that both sudden death and sudden birth of entanglement may occur in such a simple system. We also discuss a different partition, in which the isolated qubit is considered to be coupled to a composite environment, constituted by the other qubit plus the field mode.

Individual quantum systems may be interacting with surrounding environments having a small number of degrees of freedom. It is therefore relevant to understand the extent to which such small (but uncontrollable) environments could affect the quantum properties of the system of interest.Here we discuss a simple system-environment toy model, constituted by a two-level atom (atom 1) interacting with a single mode cavity field. The field is also assumed to be (weakly) coupled to an external noisy subsystem, the small environment, modeled as a second two-level atom (atom 2). We investigate the action of the minimal environment on the dynamics of the linear entropy (state purity) and the atomic dipole squeezing of atom 1, as well as the entanglement between atom 1 and the field. We also obtain the full analytical solution of the two atom Tavis-Cummings model for both arbitrary coupling strengths and frequency detunings, necessary to analyze the influence of the field-environment detuning on the evolution of the above mentioned quantum properties. For complementarity, we discuss the role of the degree of mixedness of the environment by analyzing the time-averaged linear entropy of atom 1.1

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We investigate some aspects of the dynamics and entanglement of bipartite quantum system (atom-quantized field), coupled to a third "external" subsystem (quantized field). We make use of the Raman coupled model; a three-level atom in a lambda configuration interacting with two modes of the quantized cavity field. We consider the far off resonance limit, which allows the derivation of an effective Hamiltonian of a two-level atom coupled to the fields. We also make a comparison with the situation in which one of the modes is treated classically rather than prepared in a quantum field (coherent state).