Entanglement of mechanical oscillators coupled to a nonequilibrium environment

Max Ludwig, K. Hammerer, and Florian Marquardt
Phys. Rev. A 82, 012333 – Published 29 July 2010

Abstract

Recent experiments aim at cooling nanomechanical resonators to the ground state by coupling them to nonequilibrium environments in order to observe quantum effects such as entanglement. This raises the general question of how such environments affect entanglement. Here we show that there is an optimal dissipation strength for which the entanglement between two coupled oscillators is maximized. Our results are established with the help of a general framework of exact quantum Langevin equations valid for arbitrary bath spectra, in and out of equilibrium. We point out why the commonly employed Lindblad approach fails to give even a qualitatively correct picture.

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  • Received 22 December 2009

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.82.012333

©2010 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Max Ludwig1,2,*, K. Hammerer3, and Florian Marquardt1,2,4

  • 1Department of Physics, Center for NanoScience, and Arnold Sommerfeld Center for Theoretical Physics, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Theresienstrasse 37, D-80333 Munich, Germany
  • 2Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Staudtstrasse 7, D-91058 Erlangen, Germany
  • 3Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Communication, Austrian Academy of Sciences, and Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Innsbruck, Technikerstrasse 21a, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria
  • 4Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light, Günter-Scharowsky-Strasse 1/Bau 24, D-91058 Erlangen, Germany

  • *max.ludwig@physik.uni-erlangen.de

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Vol. 82, Iss. 1 — July 2010

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