Entanglement-storage units

We introduce a protocol based on optimal control to drive many-body quantum systems into long-lived entangled states, protected from decoherence by large energy gaps, without requiring any a priori knowledge of the system. With this approach it is possible to implement scalable entanglement-storage units. We test the protocol in the Lipkin–Meshkov–Glick model, a prototype many-body quantum system that describes different experimental setups, and in the ordered Ising chain, a model representing a possible implementation of a quantum bus.