Entanglement of mechanical oscillators coupled to a nonequilibrium environment

Journal Article · Thu Jul 15 00:00:00 EDT 2010 · Physical Review. A

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PHYSREVA.82.012333· OSTI ID:21442896

Ludwig, Max ^[1]; Hammerer, K ^[2]; Marquardt, Florian ^[1]

---

1. Department of Physics, Center for NanoScience, and Arnold Sommerfeld Center for Theoretical Physics, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet Muenchen, Theresienstrasse 37, D-80333 Munich (Germany)
2. Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Communication, Austrian Academy of Sciences, and Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Innsbruck, Technikerstrasse 21a, 6020 Innsbruck (Austria)

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.

• OSTI ID: 21442896
• Journal Information: Physical Review. A, Vol. 82, Issue 1; Other Information: DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.82.012333; (c) 2010 The American Physical Society; ISSN 1050-2947
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
COOLING
COUPLING
EQUILIBRIUM
GROUND STATES
LANGEVIN EQUATION
OSCILLATORS
QUANTUM ENTANGLEMENT
QUANTUM MECHANICS
RESONATORS
ELECTRONIC EQUIPMENT
ENERGY LEVELS
EQUATIONS
EQUIPMENT
MECHANICS