Dynamics of tripartite entanglement

Maximally entangled states are of utmost importance to quantum communication, dense coding, and quantum teleportation. With a trapped ion placed inside a high finesse optical cavity, interacting with field of an external laser and quantized cavity field, a scheme to generate a maximally entangled three qubit GHZ state, is proposed. The dynamics of tripartite entanglement is investigated, using negativity as an entanglement measure and linear entropy as a measure of mixedness of a state. It is found that (a) the number of modes available to the subsystem determines the maximum entanglement of a subsystem, b) at entanglement maxima and minima, linear entropy and negativity uniquely determine the nature of state, but the two measures do not induce the same ordering of states, and c) for a special choice of system parameters maximally entangled tripartite two mode GHZ state is generated. The scheme presented for GHZ state generation is a single step process and is reduction free. PACS: 03.67.-a, 42.50.-p, 03.67.Dd