revised manuscript received 30 April 2012） We investigate the influence of environmental decoherence on the dynamics of a coupled qubit system and quantum correlation. We analyse the relationship between concurrence and the degree of initial entanglement or the purity of initial quantum state, and also their relationship with quantum discord. The results show that the decrease of the purity of an initial quantum state can induce the attenuation of concurrence or quantum discord, but the attenuation of quantum discord is obviously slower than the concurrence＇s, correspondingly the survival time of quantum discord is longer. Further investigation reveals that the robustness of quantum discord and concurrence relies on the entanglement degree of the initial quantum state. The higher the degree of entanglement, the more robust the quantum discord is than concurrence. And the reverse is equally true. Birth and death happen to quantum discord periodically and a newborn quantum discord comes into being under a certain condition, so does the concurrence.
In this paper,we investigate the quantum correlation of coupled qubits which are initially in maximally entangled mixed states in a squeezed vacuum reservoir.We compare and analyze the effects of squeezed parameters on quantum discord and quantum concurrence.The results show that in a squeezed vacuum reservoir,the quantum discord and quantum concurrence perform with completely opposite behaviors with the change of squeezed parameters.Quantum discord survives longer with the increase of squeezed amplitude parameter,but entanglement death is faster on the contrary.The results also indicate that the classical correlation of the system is smaller than quantum discord in a vacuum reservoir,while it is bigger than quantum discord in a squeezed vacuum reservoir.The quantum discord and classical correlation are more robust than quantum concurrence in the two reservoir environments,which indicates that the entanglement actually is easily affected by decoherence and quantum discord has a stronger ability to avoid decoherence in a squeezed vacuum reservoir.
