Entanglement generation at a macroscopic scale o ers an exciting avenue to de-
velop new quantum technologies and study fundamental physics on a tabletop.
Cavity quantum optomechanics provides an ideal platform to generate and exploit
such phenomena owing to the precision of quantum optics combined with recent ex-
perimental advances in optomechanical devices. In this work, we propose schemes
operating outside the resolved-sideband regime, to prepare and verify both optical-
mechanical and mechanical-mechanical entanglement. Our schemes employ pulsed
interactions with a duration much less than the mechanical period and, together
with homodyne measurements, can both generate and characterize these types of
entanglement. To improve the performance of our schemes, a precooling stage
comprising prior pulses can be utilized to increase the amount of entanglement
prepared, and local optical squeezers may be used to provide resilience against
open-system dynamics. The entanglement generated by our schemes is quanti ed
using the logarithmic negativity and is analysed with respect to the strength of the
pulsed optomechanical interactions for realistic experimental scenarios including
mechanical decoherence and optical loss. Two separate schemes for mechanical
entanglement generation are introduced and compared: one scheme based on an
optical interferometric design, and the other comprising sequential optomechani-
cal interactions. The pulsed nature of our protocols provides more direct access to
these quantum correlations in the time domain, with applications including quan-
tum metrology and tests of quantum decoherence. By considering a parameter set
based on recent experiments, the feasibility to generate signi cant entanglement
with our schemes, even with large optical losses, is demonstrated.