Entangling molecules in the strong coupling regime

The control of atoms has enabled the creation of high-fidelity entangling gates for quantum computation [1] and quantum simulation [2]. Being able to control molecules at a quantum level, would give access to further degrees of freedom such as the vibrational or rotational degrees to the internal state structure. Entangling those degrees of freedom offers unique opportunities in quantum information processing, especially in the construction of quantum memories. A typical way to control physical and chemical processes is by coupling the material system to the quantized electromagnetic field within photonic environments [3]. In this work, we leverage this scheme to achieve molecule-molecule entanglement [4]. In particular, we consider two identical molecules spatially separated by a variable distance within a photonic environment in a high-Q infrared cavity. By resonantly coupling the effective cavity mode to a specific vibrational frequency of both molecules, we investigate how strong light-matter coupling can be used to control entanglement between vibrational quantum states of both molecules.

[1] D. Kienzler et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 140402 (2016).

[2] B. Vlastakis et al., Science 342, 607 (2013).

[3] J. A. Hutchison et al., Angewandte Chemie International Edition 51, 1592 (2012).

[4] R. Horodecki et al., Rev. Mod. Phys. 81, 865 (2009).