Generation of three-atom Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger entangled states based on separate cavities

An efficient scheme is proposed for the generation of a three-atom Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) entangled state via three separate cavities. The scheme involves interaction-detection cycles and uses resonantly coupled atoms with an additional ground state not coupled to the cavity field. The important feature of our protocol is that the generation of the three-atom GHZ state can be realized with a certain probability according to the results of photon detectors and does not require performing any Bell-state measurements.