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arXiv:1411.3945 · Physical Review B

Detecting nonlocal Cooper pair entanglement by optical Bell inequality violation

Simon E. Nigg, Rakesh P. Tiwari, Stefan Walter, Thomas L. Schmidt

Published Mar 30, 2015• 24 citations
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Abstract

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.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.91.094516

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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.
We model a superconducting $p\ensuremath{-}n$ junction in which the nnn and the ppp sides are contacted through two optical quantum dots (QDs), each embedded into a photonic nanocavity. Whenever a Cooper pair is transferred from the nnn side to the ppp side, two photons are emitted. When the two electrons of a Cooper pair are transported through different QDs, polarization-entangled photons are created, provided that the Cooper pairs retain their spin singlet character while being spatially separated on the two QDs. We show that a Clauser-Holt-Shimony-Horne (CHSH) Bell-type measurement is able to detect the entanglement of the photons over a broad range of microscopic parameters, even in the presence of parasitic processes and imperfections.
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.
The generation of spin-entangled electrons is an important prerequisite for future solid-state quantum technologies. Cooper pairs in a superconductor can be split into separate electrons in a spin-singlet state, however, detecting their entanglement remains an open experimental challenge. Proposals to detect the entanglement by violating a Bell inequality typically require a large number of current cross-correlation measurements, and not all entangled states can be detected in this way. Here, we instead formulate an entanglement witness that can detect the spin-entanglement using only three cross-correlation measurements of the currents in the outputs of a Cooper pair splitter. We identify the optimal measurement settings for witnessing the entanglement, and we illustrate the use of our entanglement witness with a realistic model of a Cooper pair splitter for which we evaluate the cross-correlations of the output currents. Specifically, we find that the entanglement of the spins can be detected even with a moderate level of decoherence. Our work thereby paves the way for an experimental detection of the entanglement produced by Cooper pair splitters.
We investigate entanglement transfer from a system of two spin-entangled electron-hole pairs, each placed in a separate single mode cavity, to the photons emitted due to cavity leakage. Dipole selection rules and a splitting between the light hole and the heavy hole subbands are the crucial ingredients establishing a one-to-one correspondence between electron spins and circular photon polarizations. To account for the measurement of the photons as well as dephasing effects, we choose a stochastic Schrödinger equation and a conditional master equation approach, respectively. The influence of interactions with the environment as well as asymmetries in the coherent couplings on the photon entanglement is analysed for two concrete measurement schemes. The first one is designed to violate the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt (CHSH) inequality, while the second one employs the visibility of interference fringes to prove the entanglement of the photons. Because of the spatial separation of the entangled electronic system over two quantum dots, a successful verification of entangled photons emitted by this system would imply the detection of nonlocal spin entanglement of massive particles in a solid state structure.
Bell-inequality checks constitute a probe of entanglement---given a source of entangled particles, their violation is a signature of the nonlocal nature of quantum mechanics. Here, we study a solid-state device producing pairs of entangled electrons, a superconductor emitting Cooper pairs properly split into the two arms of a normal-metallic fork with the help of appropriate filters. We formulate Bell-type inequalities in terms of current-current cross correlators, the natural quantities measured in mesoscopic physics; their violation provides evidence that this device indeed is a source of entangled electrons.
Devices to generate on-demand non-local spin entangled electron pairs have potential application as solid-state analogues of the entangled photon sources used in quantum optics. Recently, Andreev entanglers that use two quantum dots as filters to adiabatically split and separate the quasi-particles of Cooper pairs have shown efficient splitting through measurements of the transport charge but the spin entanglement has not been directly confirmed. Here we report measurements on parallel quantum dot Josephson junction devices allowing a Josephson current to flow due to the adiabatic splitting and recombination of the Cooper pair between the dots. The evidence for this non-local transport is confirmed through study of the non-dissipative supercurrent while tuning independently the dots with local electrical gates. As the Josephson current arises only from processes that maintain the coherence, we can confirm that a current flows from the spatially separated entangled pair.