Delayed sudden birth of entanglement

The concept of time delayed creation of entanglement by the dissipative process of spontaneous emission is investigated. A threshold effect for the creation of entanglement is found where the initially unentangled qubits can be entangled after a finite time despite the fact that the coherence between the qubits exists for all times. This delayed creation of entanglement, which we call sudden birth of entanglement, is opposite to the currently extensively discussed sudden death of entanglement and is characteristic for transient dynamics of one-photon entangled states of the system. We determine the threshold time for the creation of entanglement and find it is related to time at which the antisymmetric state remains the only excited state being populated. It is shown that the threshold time can be controlled by the distance between the qubits and the direction of initial excitation relative to the interatomic axis. This effect suggests an alternative for the study of entanglement and provides an interesting resource for creation on demand of entanglement between two qubits.