Atomic Bell states generation in an open driven cavity QED system

We show that two uncorrelated two-level atoms can become maximally entangled if they are both off-resonantly coupled to a dissipative cavity mode, initially in the vacuum state, and strongly driven by a resonant coherent field. For moderate atom-field detuning we find that the quantum correlations in the tripartite system can alternatively concentrate either in the atom-atom subsystem or in the two atom-field subsystems. In the first case Bell states as well as their superpositions are generated for low enough cavity decay rates. In a dispersive coupling regime the atomic entanglement grows up monotonically to the maximum value where it remains nearly stationary without being affected by cavity dissipation.