Scheme for entanglement generation in an atom-cavity system via dissipation

We propose a dissipative scheme to generate a maximally entangled state for two Λ-type atoms trapped in an optical cavity. Different from the unitary-dynamics-based scheme, our work shows that both atomic spontaneous emission and cavity decay are no longer detrimental, but necessary for entanglement generation. The scheme is independent of initial states and does not require precise time control. A final numerical simulation with two groups of experimental parameters indicates that the present scheme is feasible and the performance could be better than the unitary-dynamics-based scheme.