Tripartite entanglement of atoms trapped in coupled cavities via quantum Zeno dynamics

A scheme is proposed for the generation of a W state for three atoms trapped in spatially separated cavities connected by optical fibers via quantum Zeno dynamics. Our scheme is based on the resulting effective dynamics induced by continuous coupling between the atoms and cavities. The effects of decoherence such as atomic spontaneous emission and the fiber and cavity losses are considered. Numerical results show that the scheme is very robust against the cavity decay due to a tiny excitation probability of the cavity fields during the operation. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.