  We report results of a ground-state entanglement protocol for a pair of Cs
atoms separated by 6~$\mu$m, combining the Rydberg blockade mechanism with a
two-photon Raman transitions to prepare the $\vert\Psi^+\rangle=(\vert
10\rangle+\vert 01\rangle)/\sqrt{2}$ Bell state with a loss-corrected fidelity
of 0.81(5), equal to the best demonstrated fidelity for atoms trapped in
optical tweezers but without the requirement for dynamically adjustable
interatomic spacing. Qubit state coherence is also critical for quantum
information applications, and we characterise both ground-state and
ground-Rydberg dephasing rates using Ramsey spectroscopy. We demonstrate
transverse dephasing times $T_2^*=10(1)$~ms and $T_2'=0.14(1)$~s for the qubit
levels and achieve long ground-Rydberg coherence times of $T_2^*=17(2)~\mu$s as
required for implementing high-fidelity multi-qubit gate sequences where a
control atom remains in the Rydberg state while applying local operations on
neighbouring target qubits.
