Entangled Mechanical Oscillators

Quantum entanglement has been the subject of considerable research, in part due to its non-intuitive nature and ubiquitous presence in quantum information processing. For this reason, it is of interest to study entanglement in a variety of systems. We demonstrate deterministic entanglement in a system pervasive in nature: mechanical oscillators. Here, the mechanical oscillators are composed of the vibrations of two Be$^{+}$- Mg$^{+}$ ion pairs held in spatially separate locations. We also demonstrate the entanglement of the internal states of a Be$^{+ }$ ion with a distant mechanical oscillator. The techniques demonstrated in this experiment are likely to form core components of large-scale trapped-ion quantum information processing. * Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel ** Lockheed Martin, Denver, CO