Electromagnetically Induced Entanglement

We present a novel quantum phenomenon named electromagnetically induced entanglement in the conventional Lambda-type three-level atomic system driven by a strong pump field and a relatively weak probe field. Nearly perfect entanglement between the pump and probe fields can be achieved with a low coherence decay rate between the two lower levels, high pump-field intensity, and large optical depth of the atomic ensemble. The physical origin is quantum coherence between the lower doublet produced by the pump and probe fields, similar to the well-known electromagnetically induced transparency. This method would greatly facilitate the generation of nondegenerate narrow-band continuous-variable entanglement between bright light beams by using only coherent laser fields, and may find potential and broad applications in realistic quantum information processing.