Researchers entangled the beats of tiny, drumlike aluminum membranes, measuring their interlinked quantum properties.
Both entanglement and back-action evasion have been previously observed in macroscopic systems but in different, and arguably more limited, ways. In 2018 another group of researchers entangled two strips of silicon. Other experiments have even entangled vibrations in diamonds. Yet the tricks demonstrated by both teams in the recent Science papers have allowed them to observe quantum effects with far fewer caveats.
“We’re not discovering anything new about quantum mechanics here,” says Yiwen Chu, a quantum researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, who was not involved in either study. But getting these measurements still requires “very impressive technological advances,” she says.
