  We investigate how two spatially separated qubits coupled to a common heat
bath can be entangled by purely dissipative dynamics. We identify a dynamical
time scale associated with the lifetime of the dissipatively generated
entanglement and show that it can be much longer than either the typical
single-qubit decoherence time or the time scale on which a direct exchange
interaction can entangle the qubits. We give an approximate analytical
expression for the long-time evolution of the qubit concurrence and propose an
ion trap scheme in which such dynamics should be observable.
