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arXiv:0810.5245 · Physical Review B

Entanglement of electrons field-emitted from a superconductor

Kazuya Yuasa, Paolo Facchi A, Rosario Fazio, Hiromichi Nakazato, Ichiro Ohba, Saverio Pascazio, Shuichi Tasaki

Published May 11, 2009• 6 citations
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Abstract

Under appropriate circumstances the electrons emitted from a superconducting tip can be entangled. We analyze these nonlocal correlations by studying the coincidences of the field-emitted electrons and show that electrons emitted in opposite directions violate Bell's inequality. We scrutinize the interplay between the bosonic nature of Cooper pairs and the fermionic nature of electrons. We further discuss the feasibility of our analysis in the light of present experimental capabilities.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.79.180503

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Under appropriate circumstances the electrons emitted from a superconducting tip can be entangled. We analyze these nonlocal correlations by studying the coincidences of the field-emitted electrons and show that electrons emitted in opposite directions violate Bell's inequality. We scrutinize the interplay between the bosonic nature of Cooper pairs and the fermionic nature of electrons. We further discuss the feasibility of our analysis in the light of present experimental capabilities.
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Based on the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer theory of superconductivity, the coherent splitting of Cooper pairs from a superconductor to two spatially separated quantum dots has been predicted to generate nonlocal pairs of entangled electrons. In order to test this hypothesis, we propose a scheme to transfer the spin state of a split Cooper pair onto the polarization state of a pair of optical photons. We show that the photon pairs produced can be used to violate a Bell inequality, unambiguously demonstrating the entanglement of the split Cooper pairs.
Abstract Correlations are fundamental in describing many body systems - not only in natural sciences. However, in experiments, correlations are notoriously difficult to assess on the microscopic scale, especially for electron spins. Here, we demonstrate a direct measurement of the spin cross-correlations between the currents of a Cooper pair splitter, an electronic device that emits electrons originating from Cooper pairs in a superconductor. While it is firmly established theoretically that these electron pairs form maximally spin-entangled singlet states with opposite spin projections, no spin correlation experiments have been demonstrated so far. We use ferromagnetic sidegates, compatible with superconducting electronic structures, to individually spin polarize the transmissions of two quantum dots fabricated in the two electronic paths, which act as tunable spin filters. The signals are detected in standard transport and in highly sensitive transconductance experiments. We find that the spin-cross correlation is negative, compatible with spin singlet emission, and deviates from the ideal value mostly due to a finite overlap of the Zeeman split quantum dot states. Our results demonstrate a new route to perform spin auto- and cross correlation experiments in nanometer scaled electronic devices, especially suitable for those relying on magnetic field sensitive superconducting elements, like unconventional, triplet or topologically non-trivial superconductors, or to perform Bell tests with massive particles, like electrons.
Electron entanglement: splitting pairs One of the most counterintuitive aspects of quantum mechanics is non-locality, manifesting as spatially separated objects influencing each other in a direct way. Experimental verifications of such concepts have been conducted successfully using entangled pairs of photons to test so-called Bell inequalities, but similar demonstrations using electrons have remained elusive owing to the inherent difficulty of creating and splitting pairs of entangled electrons. Lukas Hofstetter and colleagues now demonstrate that this is possible in a Y-shaped electron entangler consisting of a superconductor at its stem, coupled via tunnelling barriers to two separate quantum dots along the fork-like branches of the device. The entangled pairs of electrons are naturally formed in the superconductor, which in its ground state consists of Cooper pairs of electrons, and split by Coulomb interactions and careful tuning of the energy levels of the quantum dots. The study paves the way for the study of electronic entanglement and experimental tests of Bell inequalities in the solid state.
We study the time-dependent electron-electron and electron-hole correlations in a mesoscopic device which is splitting an incident current of free fermions into two spatially separated particle streams. We analyze the appearance of entanglement as manifested in a Bell inequality test and discuss its origin in terms of local spin-singlet correlations already present in the initial channel and the action of post-selection during the Bell-type measurement. The time window over which the Bell inequality is violated is determined in the tunneling limit and for the general situation with arbitrary transparencies. We compare our results with alternative Bell inequality tests based on coincidence probabilities.