Entangling distant solid-state spins via thermal phonons

The implementation of quantum entangling gates between qubits is essential to achieve scalable quantum computation. Here, we propose a robust scheme to realize an entangling gate for distant solid-state spins via a mechanical oscillator in its thermal equilibrium state. By appropriate Hamiltonian engineering and usage of a protected subspace, we show that the proposed scheme is able to significantly reduce the thermal effect of the mechanical oscillator on the spins. In particular, we demonstrate that a high entangling gate fidelity can be achieved even for a relatively high thermal occupation. Our scheme can thus relax the requirement for ground-state cooling of the mechanical oscillator, and may find applications in scalable quantum information processing in hybrid solid-state architectures.