Decoherence of an entangled state of a strongly-correlated double quantum dot structure through tunneling processes

We consider two quantum dots described by the Anderson-impurity model with one electron per dot. The goal of our work is to study the decay of a maximally entangled state between the two electrons localized in the dots. We prepare the system in a perfect singlet and then tunnel-couple one of the dots to leads, which induces the non-equilibrium dynamics. We identify two cases: if the leads are subject to a sufficiently large voltage and thus a finite current, then direct tunneling processes cause decoherence and the entanglement as well as spin correlations decay exponentially fast. At zero voltage or small voltages and beyond the mixed-valence regime, virtual tunneling processes dominate and lead to a slower loss of coherence. We analyze this problem by studying the real-time dynamics of the spin correlations and the concurrence using two techniques, namely the time-dependent density matrix renormalization group method and a master-equation method. The results from these two approaches are in excellent agreement in the direct-tunneling regime for the case in which the dot is weakly tunnel-coupled to the leads. We present a quantitative analysis of the decay rates of the spin correlations and the concurrence as a function of tunneling rate, interaction strength, and voltage.