Entanglement, identity and disentanglement in two-atom spontaneous emission

Abstract: Two recent experiments studying the potential effect of entanglement on the emission properties of excited atoms produced in molecular photodissociation have been interpreted in conflicting ways. We present a theoretical analysis of the problem, showing that the experimental results can be explained by a combination of three processes: entanglement, exchange effects associated with the identical nature of the atoms and disentanglement by spontaneous emission. According to our approach these experiments provide the first verification of the phenomenon of disentanglement by spontaneous emission.