  For carrying out many quantum information protocols entanglement must be
established in advance between two distant parties. Practically, inevitable
interaction of entangled subsystems with their environments during distribution
and storage will result in degradation of entanglement. Here we investigate the
decoherence of two-qubit entangled states in the local amplitude noise. We show
that there exists a set of partially entangled states that are more robust than
maximally entangled states in terms of the residual quantum correlation
measured by concurrence, fully entangled fraction, and quantum discord. This
result indicates that nonmaximally entangled states can outperform maximally
entangled states for quantum correlation distribution and storage under the
amplitude damping. It also educes a notable consequence that the ordering of
states under quantum correlation monotones can be reversed even by local
trace-preserving and completely positive maps.
