Special Colloquium

As with other physical attributes, quantum entanglement is also subject to decay. And, it can end in finite time which has been termed entanglement sudden death. I will discuss how a local transformation which cannot change the entanglement of A and B at the instant it is made can nevertheless affect the subsequent time evolution. Indeed, it can delay or even avert that death but can also hasten the end, all dependent on the time of application. A recent experiment at RRI with entangled photons has verified all three modifications. I will also discuss a more general context for handling dissipation and decoherence in quantum systems that was pioneered by George Sudarshan and fellow Indian physicists over sixty years ago.