Researchers at University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering have realized quantum entanglement between two big resonators.

They have described the methods and results of this study in a paper published in Nature Communications.

This is interesting because the researchers have entangled large objects, not just tiny particles like electrons. The entanglement involves phonons, which are quantum particles of sound. These phonons are not single particles, but “collective motion of maybe quadrillions of particles behaving together.” This makes the entanglement macroscopic, much larger than usual quantum experiments.

This study demonstrates “entanglement between two massive objects,” says researcher Ming-Han Chou in a press release issued by University of Chicago. “The second thing we demonstrate in this research is that our platform is scalable. If you can imagine building a big quantum processor, our platform would be like a unit cell within that.”

“What we have shown here is we can go one step further to prepare more complicated entangled states, maybe even potentially add logical encodings,” adds researcher Hong Qiao.

Pushing quantum boundaries

The researchers used two acoustic wave resonators on separate chips, each connected to a superconducting qubit. These qubits help generate and detect the entangled phonon states. The researchers showed that these large resonators could be entangled with high fidelity, meaning the entanglement is strong and reliable.

However, there’s a catch: the resonators’ lifetime is short, about 300 nanoseconds. This limits how long the entanglement lasts. Improving this lifetime is crucial for applications like quantum communication or computing. The researchers aim to increase this to over 100 microseconds, a big jump. They mention that although this seems challenging, there are known methods to achieve this longer lifetime.

This work pushes the boundaries where quantum mechanics applies. A longer-lasting entanglement would allow more powerful communication or distributed quantum computing, two major goals in building quantum networks.

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