We address the dynamics induced by collective atomic recoil in a Bose-Einstein condensate in the presence of radiation losses and atomic decoherence. In particular, we focus on the linear regime of the lasing mechanism, and analyze the effects of losses and decoherence on the generation of entanglement. The dynamics is that of three bosons, two atomic modes interacting with a single-mode radiation field, coupled with a bath of oscillators. The resulting three-mode dissipative Master equation is solved analytically in terms of the Wigner function. We examine in details the two complementary limits of high-$Q$ cavity and bad cavity, the latter corresponding to the so-called superradiant regime, both in the quasiclassical and quantum regimes. We found that three-mode entanglement as well as two-mode atom-atom and atom-radiation entanglement is generally robust against losses and decoherence, thus making the present system a good candidate for the experimental observation of entanglement in condensate systems. In particular, steady-state entanglement may be obtained both between atoms with opposite momenta and between atoms and photons.

• Received 7 April 2004

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.70.043809