Addressing various types of decoherence is of paramount importance for employing entanglement in quantum information processing and quantum computing. In this paper, we propose two schemes to manipulate entanglement of two qubits stored in a common environment by means of combined weak measurements and quantum measurement reversals. We derive the explicit conditions for the measurement strengths under which at any time and for any initial states the qubits’ entanglement can be protected quite well with a reasonable finite success probability. Moreover, the two schemes enable us in principle to achieve the maximal entanglement or to restore the initial state (entanglement) of the qubits.

• Received 18 June 2012

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.86.012325