Universal quantum entanglement between an oscillator and continuous fields

Haixing Miao, Stefan Danilishin, and Yanbei Chen
Phys. Rev. A 81, 052307 – Published 7 May 2010

Abstract

Quantum entanglement has been actively sought in optomechanical and electromechanical systems. The simplest system is a mechanical oscillator interacting with a coherent optical field, while the oscillator also suffers from thermal decoherence. With a rigorous functional analysis, we develop a mathematical framework for treating quantum entanglement that involves infinite degrees of freedom. We show that the quantum entanglement is always present between the oscillator and continuous optical field—even when the environmental temperature is high and the oscillator is highly classical. Such a universal entanglement is also shown to be able to survive more than one mechanical oscillation period if the characteristic frequency of the optomechanical interaction is larger than that of the thermal noise. In addition, we introduce effective optical modes that are ordered by the entanglement strength to better understand the entanglement structure, analogously to the energy spectrum of an atomic system. In particular, we derive the optical mode that is maximally entangled with the mechanical oscillator, which will be useful for future quantum computing and encoding information into mechanical degrees of freedom.

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  • Received 7 August 2009

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.81.052307

©2010 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Haixing Miao1, Stefan Danilishin2,3, and Yanbei Chen4

  • 1School of Physics, University of Western Australia, Western Australia 6009, Australia
  • 2Physics Faculty, Moscow State University, Moscow 119991, Russia
  • 3Max-Planck Institut für Gravitationsphysik (Albert-Einstein-Institut) and Leibniz Universität Hannover, Callinstr. 38, D-30167 Hannover, Germany
  • 4Theoretical Astrophysics 130-33, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, USA

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Vol. 81, Iss. 5 — May 2010

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