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arXiv:2511.04537

Probing quantum entanglement with Generalized Parton Distributions at the Electron-Ion Collider

Yoshitaka Hatta, Jakob Schoenleber

hep-phhep-exquant-phSubmitted Nov 6, 2025• Announced Nov 7, 2025
v1 · Nov 6, 2025v2 · Nov 26, 2025v3 · Mar 30, 2026
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Abstract

Within the collinear factorization framework based on Generalized Parton Distributions (GPDs), we calculate the spin density matrix of exclusively produced quark and antiquark pairs $u\bar{u}$, $d\bar{d}$, $s\bar{s}$, $c\bar{c}$, $b\bar{b}$ in Deep Inelastic Scattering. The presence of both real and imaginary parts in the GPD amplitudes leads to a rich pattern of entanglement between the quark and the antiquark. We map out kinematical regions where the pairs exhibit entanglement, Bell nonlocality and non-stabilizerness (`magic'). We also predict that massive quarks and antiquarks are transversely polarized, similar to the well-known transverse hyperon polarization in unpolarized collisions. In strangeness, charm and bottom productions, the polarization can reach 50-80% in certain kinematic regions in the low-energy runs of the Electron-Ion Collider.

Comments
18 pages, many figures

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Within the collinear factorization framework based on Generalized Parton Distributions (GPDs), we calculate the spin density matrix of exclusively produced quark and antiquark pairs uuˉu\bar{u}uuˉ, ddˉd\bar{d}ddˉ, ssˉs\bar{s}ssˉ, ccˉc\bar{c}ccˉ, bbˉb\bar{b}bbˉ in Deep Inelastic Scattering. The presence of both real and imaginary parts in the GPD amplitudes leads to a rich pattern of entanglement between the quark and the antiquark. We map out kinematical regions where the pairs exhibit entanglement, Bell nonlocality and non-stabilizerness (`magic'). We also predict that massive quarks and antiquarks are transversely polarized, similar to the well-known transverse hyperon polarization in unpolarized collisions. In strangeness, charm and bottom productions, the polarization can reach 50-80% in certain kinematic regions in the low-energy runs of the Electron-Ion Collider.
It has been shown that entanglement and Bell nonlocality, which are key concepts in quantum mechanics, can be probed in high-energy colliders via processes of fundamental particle scattering. In fact, the ATLAS and CMS Collaborations have measured entanglement using top-quark pairs produced in proton-proton collisions at the LHC. Recently, it was shown that spin correlations can be measured in pairs of bottom quarks at the LHC, despite the fact that bottom quarks, unlike top quarks, hadronize before decaying. Here, we demonstrate that quantum correlations can also be studied using bottom-quark pairs, and analyze the feasibility of the observation of entanglement and Bell nonlocality in several collider experiments. Given the low mass of the bottom quark relative to typical energies accessible at the LHC, many of the bottom-quark pairs are in the ultrarelativistic regime, where they can exhibit strong spin entanglement. We find that entanglement of bottom-quark pairs may be measurable even with the LHC Run 2 data, especially with the CMS B parking dataset, while observation of Bell nonlocality may become feasible at the high-luminosity phase of the LHC.
Spin correlations offer a quantum-information perspective on the partonic final states produced in high-energy scattering. We discuss the spin-density matrix of a heavy quark-antiquark pair in two complementary small-xxx processes. In coherent diffractive production, color-singlet exchange enforces an unusually strong relation between entanglement and Bell nonlocality: a longitudinal photon creates a maximally entangled pair, whereas for a transverse photon the pair is generically both entangled and Bell nonlocal, with a model-independent point of maximal entanglement. In inclusive back-to-back production, the density matrix factorizes into a hard spin tensor and the unpolarized and linearly polarized Weizsäcker--Williams gluon distributions. The latter generates an azimuthal modulation and can increase the concurrence when the dijet relative momentum and imbalance are approximately orthogonal. Strikingly, in the saturation model considered, nonlinear effects wash out this modulation for q⊥≲3Qsq_\perp\lesssim 3Q_sq⊥​≲3Qs​, whereas the dilute BFKL limit, in which G2/G0→1G_2/G_0\to1G2​/G0​→1, yields a maximal modulation independent of the imbalance magnitude. These results connect quantum-information observables with the Pomeron and saturation physics.
We show that the hierarchy of quantum correlations produced in deep-inelastic scattering (DIS) can serve as a novel probe of the proton's nonperturbative structure. Specifically, we show that quantum entanglement, discord, steering, and magic provide nontrivial and complementary sensitivities to the nucleon's parton distribution functions (PDFs), particularly those encoding the transverse-spin polarization of the interacting quark. This connection leads to a unique probe of the proton's parton-level tensor charges with implications for beyond Standard Model (BSM) physics searches. We propose how quantum information measures can be utilized for precision studies of hadron structure at DIS experiments like the upcoming Electron-Ion Collider (EIC).
Entanglement is an intrinsic property of quantum mechanics and is predicted to be exhibited in the particles produced at the Large Hadron Collider. A measurement of the extent of entanglement in top quark-antiquark (t¯t) events produced in proton–proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV is performed with the data recorded by the CMS experiment at the CERN LHC in 2016, and corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 36.3 fb−1 . The events are selected based on the presence of two leptons with opposite charges and high transverse momentum. An entanglement-sensitive observable D is derived from the top quark spin-dependent parts of the t¯t production density matrix and measured in the region of the t¯t production threshold. Values of D < −1/3 are evidence of entanglement and D is observed (expected) to be −0.480+0.026 −0.029 (−0.467+0.026 −0.029) at the parton level. With an observed significance of 5.1 standard deviations with respect to the non-entangled hypothesis, this provides observation of quantum mechanical entanglement within t¯t pairs in this phase space. This measurement provides a new probe of quantum mechanics at the highest energies ever produced.
We investigate quark-antiquark entanglement in heavy quarkonium within a nonperturbative light-front Hamiltonian framework. By tracing over the antiquark degrees of freedom in the hadronic state vector, we construct the reduced density matrix of the quark subsystem and compute the associated von Neumann entropy. For spin-0 quarkonia, we show that this entropy reduces to the Shannon entropy of the unpolarized transverse momentum dependent parton distribution (TMD), up to constant color and spin contributions. For spin-1 quarkonia, we derive the explicit polarization dependence of the entropy and connect it to polarized and tensor-polarized TMDs. Using light-front wave functions obtained via basis light-front quantization (BLFQ), we evaluate the entanglement entropy for charmonium and bottomonium states, revealing a pronounced sensitivity to the polarization of vector mesons. Furthermore, we resolve the infrared parameter by matching the momentum-space entropy to a harmonic-oscillator representation. Ultimately, these results establish entanglement entropy as a novel probe of nonperturbative quarkonium structure, forging a direct link between quantum information measures and partonic observables.
Using the soft-gluon theorem, we identify a soft-recoil mechanism by which unresolved gluon radiation induces decoherence in the spin correlations of heavy quark-antiquark pairs produced by longitudinally polarized virtual photons in deep-inelastic scattering. Upon tracing over the unresolved gluon, the reduced spin density matrix is block diagonal in the mirror parity of the production plane and is governed by two coefficients: a parity-odd normal-spin flip, which reduces the normal-axis correlation, and a parity-even stochastic rotation of the spin-correlation plane about its normal, which suppresses the in-plane spin coherences while leaving the normal-axis correlation unchanged. From the complete tree-level next-to-soft amplitude with the exact color-octet structure we derive both coefficients, together with the trace and antisymmetric in-plane terms, in closed form. The parity-odd coefficient is the larger one, by a factor of at least 3.53.53.5, and grows as the inverse square of the heavy-quark transverse momentum. We estimate the resulting reduction of concurrence and Bell-CHSH violation, and propose an infrared-safe, radiation-binned EIC observable, formed at fixed Born kinematics after longitudinal-transverse separation, which isolates the two channels. We estimate its size, including multiple wide-angle emissions in an independent-emission model, the conditions under which detector and kinematic effects cancel, and the statistics required. The latter, however, exceed the yield of exclusive heavy-baryon pairs at nominal EIC luminosity by several orders of magnitude, makes the observable elusive for the measurement accessible in that channel.