Long-lived entanglement between two distant atoms via left-handed materials

A method is proposed to generate entanglement between two distant atoms and to preserve the entanglement for a long time by using the properties of refocusing and phase compensation of left-handed (negative-index) materials and spontaneous emission. A distance of ten wavelengths in our method compared with less than one wavelength in free space is achieved for the generation of concurrence of 1/2 between two identical atoms from an initially separable state. The concurrence can be kept for a very long time for ideal left-handed materials, and can be kept for tens of (or several) atomic lifetimes for absorptive left-handed materials.