a b s t r a c t The dynamics of charge qubits coupled to a nanomechanical resonator under the influence of both a phonon bath in contact with the resonator and irreversible decay of the qubits is considered. The focus of our analysis is devoted to multi-particle entanglement and the effects arising from the coupling to the reservoir. Even in the presence of the reservoirs, the inherent entanglement is found to be rather robust. Due to this fact, together with control of system parameters, the system may, therefore, be especially suited for quantum information processing. Our findings also shed light on the evolution of open quantum many-body systems. For instance, due to intrinsic qubit–qubit couplings our model is related to a driven XY spin model. & 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.