Entanglement dynamics for atoms near a reflecting boundary: enhancement and suppression by environment-induced interactions

Abstract: We investigate how environment-induced interactions influence the entanglement dynamics of two static atoms placed near a perfectly reflecting boundary. In this setting, the environment-induced interactions include both atom-boundary contributions (position-dependent Lamb shifts) and the induced atom-atom interaction mediated by the field. We show that, regardless of the initial two-atom state, the entanglement dynamics differs qualitatively and quantitatively from predictions that neglect these energy-shift effects. Depending on the geometry and parameter regime, the environment-induced interactions can either enhance entanglement generation -- yielding a larger maximum concurrence and a longer entanglement lifetime -- or suppress it, reducing both the peak concurrence and the survival time. This behavior contrasts sharply with the free-space case, where the environment-induced atom-atom interaction affects entanglement generation only for a restricted class of initial states and does so in an exclusively assisting manner.