Control of two-atom entanglement with two thermal fields in coupled cavities

The dynamical evolution of a quantum system composed of two coupled cavities, each containing a two-level atom and a single-mode thermal field, is investigated under different conditions. The entanglement between the two atoms is controlled by the hopping strength and the detuning between the atomic transition and the cavities. We find that when the atomic transition is far off-resonant with both the eigenmodes of the coupled-cavity system, the maximally entangled state for the two atoms can be generated with the initial state in which one atom is in the ground state and the other is in the excited state. When both the two atoms are initially in the excited state, the entanglement exhibits periodical sudden birth and death. By choosing appropriate parameter values, the initial maximal entanglement of the two atoms can be frozen. The relation between the concurrence and the cooperative parameter is calculated.