Entangling mechanical vibrations of two massive ferrimagnets by fully exploiting the nonlinearity of magnetostriction

Abstract

Quantum entanglement in the motion of macroscopic objects is of significance to both fundamental studies and quantum technologies. Here we show how to entangle the mechanical vibration modes of two massive ferrimagnets that are placed in the same microwave cavity. Each ferrimagnet supports a magnon mode and a low-frequency vibration mode coupled by the magnetostrictive force. The two magnon modes are, respectively, coupled to the microwave cavity by the magnetic dipole interaction. We first generate a stationary nonlocal entangled state between the vibration mode of the ferrimagnet-1 and the magnon mode of the ferrimagnet-2. This is realized by continuously driving the ferrimagnet-1 with a strong red-detuned microwave field and the entanglement is achieved by exploiting the magnomechanical parametric down-conversion and the cavity–magnon state-swap interaction. We then switch off the pump on the ferrimagnet-1 and, simultaneously, turn on a red-detuned pulsed drive on the ferrimagnet-2. The latter drive is used to activate the magnomechanical beamsplitter interaction, which swaps the magnonic and mechanical states of the ferrimagnet-2. Consequently, the previously generated phonon–magnon entanglement is transferred to the mechanical modes of two ferrimagnets. The work provides a scheme to prepare entangled states of mechanical motion of two massive objects, which may find applications in various studies exploiting macroscopic entangled states.