The destruction of quantum interference, decoherence, and the destruction of entanglement both appear to occur under the same circumstances. To address the connection between these two phenomena, we consider the evolution of arbitrary initial states of a two-particle system under open system dynamics described by a class of master equations which produce decoherence of each particle. We show that all initial states become separable after a finite time, and we produce the explicit form of the separated state. The result extends and amplifies an earlier result of Diósi. We illustrate the general result by considering the case in which the initial state is an Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen state (in which both the positions and momenta of a particle pair are perfectly correlated). This example clearly illustrates how the spreading out in phase space produced by the environment leads to certain disentanglement conditions becoming satisfied.

• Received 8 December 2003

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.69.052105