Certification Time for Weak-Force-Mediated Entanglement between Levitated Particles

Abstract

Certifying motional entanglement generated by weak forces between levitated nanoparticles requires distinguishing entangled from separable states using finite, noisy measurement records. We show that the number of measurements required to certify Gaussian entanglement can vary among equally entangled states, and quantify this variation. We derive an attainable lower bound showing that, near the separability threshold, the required number of measurements diverges inversely with the square of the distance from this threshold. We translate the required number of measurements into an experimental certification time, comparing two protocols under comparable experimental conditions: release--recapture, in which particles evolve freely before measurement, and continuous monitoring, in which the steady state is measured continuously. We find that release--recapture enables entanglement certification at interaction strengths several orders of magnitude weaker. Moreover, minimizing certification time can favor states with less entanglement, revealing a trade-off between entanglement generation and its certification. These results highlight the role of certification in the design and optimization of ongoing efforts to probe weak-force-mediated entanglement between levitated nanoparticles.