Entanglement between macroscopic objects generated by dissipation
Thursday, August 25, 2011 - 08:00
in Physics & Chemistry
(PhysOrg.com) -- When generating entanglement between two objects, physicists typically try to minimize the objects interactions with the environment, since this interaction causes decoherence. But contrary to this thinking, scientists in a new study have experimentally demonstrated that dissipation caused by interaction with the environment can continuously generate entanglement between two macroscopic objects (two ensembles of cesium atoms containing about 1 trillion atoms all together). By combining the dissipative mechanism with continuous measurements, the researchers could achieve steady state entanglement between the two atomic ensembles for up to an hour.