On-Demand Entanglement of Molecules in a Reconfigurable Optical Tweezer Array

Abstract

Entanglement is crucial to many quantum applications including quantum information processing, simulation of quantum many-body systems, and quantum-enhanced sensing. Molecules, because of their rich internal structure and interactions, have been proposed as a promising platform for quantum science. Deterministic entanglement of individually controlled molecules has nevertheless been a long-standing experimental challenge. Here we demonstrate, for the first time, on-demand entanglement of individually prepared molecules. Using the electric dipolar interaction between pairs of molecules prepared using a reconfigurable optical tweezer array, we realize an entangling two-qubit gate, and use it to deterministically create Bell pairs. Our results demonstrate the key building blocks needed for quantum information processing, simulation of quantum spin models, and quantum-enhanced sensing. They also open up new possibilities such as using trapped molecules for quantum-enhanced fundamental physics tests and exploring collisions and chemical reactions with entangled matter.