Witnessing Entanglement via Extractable Work in a Nondegenerate Three-Level Laser

Abstract

Nowadays, it is widely acknowledged that information can serve as a thermodynamic fuel capable of powering the extraction of useful work through measurements and feedback control. Moreover, it has been demonstrated that the work extractable from a correlated bipartite state can effectively distinguish entangled states from separable ones. In this context, we introduce an operational criterion denoted as [Formula: see text] to witness the presence of entanglement in a two-mode Gaussian state [Formula: see text], based on the amount of work that can be extracted from a thermal bath using a Szilard-like engine. In this setup, the state [Formula: see text] acts as the working medium of the engine, where modes [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] are generated during the first and second transitions of a nondegenerate three-level laser, and are coupled to a shared two-mode thermal bath. Our results reveal that the proposed criterion [Formula: see text] vanishes when [Formula: see text] is a product state. Furthermore, [Formula: see text] reaches its maximum value when [Formula: see text] is coupled to a vacuum bath, but it diminishes under the influence of thermal noise. Notably, the degree of entanglement detected by [Formula: see text] can be tuned via the atomic coherence of the laser. Finally, a comparison of [Formula: see text] with a reliable measure of entanglement such as logarithmic negativity, demonstrates perfect agreement in identifying the presence of entanglement in [Formula: see text].