Restriction to the one-excitation context allows two identical two-level atoms and their common one-mode cavity field to exhibit previously unreported features of three-party entanglement during fully coherent evolution. We find entanglement showing dynamical behavior in the form of nonanalytic slope discontinuities in the time record. Specifically, the entanglements of the system can become abruptly frozen in time, remaining at a constant value, and can subsequently suddenly begin thawing from this value. We calculate the onset timing of such sudden freezings and sudden thawings under several different initial conditions. The conditions producing permanent freezing of entanglement are found. We also identify a nontrivial upper limit for the sum of three individual bipartite entanglements, which exposes the concept of entanglement “volume” and the volume shrinkage that accompanies the entanglement sharing. Further analysis of these freezing and thawing processes reveals quantitative and qualitative constraints on entanglement sharing of three qubits.

• Received 6 November 2020
• Accepted 1 February 2021

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.103.032418