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Searching for entangled electron spin states with shot noise detection

Yuanzhen Chen

Published Jun 21, 2005• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

We report experimental research into the possibility of using shot noise mea-surements to detect the entangled states of electron spins. The study is part of the effort towards the demonstration of the use of electron spins as quantum bits (qubits) for quantum computing and quantum information processing. Electrons are electrically injected into two neighboring quantum dots and interact with each other through the exchange coupling, after which they tunnel out of the dots and are incident on a beam splitter, which introduces quantum interference between electron states. Depending on the state of the electrons exiting the dots, the outgoing states of electrons scattering off the beam splitter are different, corresponding to different shot noise in the electrical currents flowing into the channels after the beam splitter. Our experimental data is consistent with most theoretical predictions and provides initial evidence of electron spin entanglement. A comprehensive study of the shot noise in mesoscopic semiconductor tunnel barriers is also reported. Besides the theoretically predicted full shot noise, sup-pressed and enhanced shot noise are also observed. Normal conductance measure-ments and numerical simulations are done to understand the shot noise deviation. Our study shows that shot noise in mesoscopic systems is extremely sensitive to the microscopic details, such as potential disorder and impurity configuration.

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We report experimental research into the possibility of using shot noise mea-surements to detect the entangled states of electron spins. The study is part of the effort towards the demonstration of the use of electron spins as quantum bits (qubits) for quantum computing and quantum information processing. Electrons are electrically injected into two neighboring quantum dots and interact with each other through the exchange coupling, after which they tunnel out of the dots and are incident on a beam splitter, which introduces quantum interference between electron states. Depending on the state of the electrons exiting the dots, the outgoing states of electrons scattering off the beam splitter are different, corresponding to different shot noise in the electrical currents flowing into the channels after the beam splitter. Our experimental data is consistent with most theoretical predictions and provides initial evidence of electron spin entanglement. A comprehensive study of the shot noise in mesoscopic semiconductor tunnel barriers is also reported. Besides the theoretically predicted full shot noise, sup-pressed and enhanced shot noise are also observed. Normal conductance measure-ments and numerical simulations are done to understand the shot noise deviation. Our study shows that shot noise in mesoscopic systems is extremely sensitive to the microscopic details, such as potential disorder and impurity configuration.
Entanglement acts as a fundamental resource for many applications in quantum communication. We propose and theoretically analyze methods for preparing and detecting entanglement between the spins of electrons in a mesoscopic environment. The entanglement production mechanism which we present is based on two quantum dots coupled to a superconductor from which paired electrons are injected via Andreev tunneling. The spin-correlated electrons can then hop from the quantum dots into normal leads. For detection we propose to measure the shot noise which is produced by the entangled electrons after they have passed a beam splitter. The enhancement of the noise by a factor of two turns out to be a unique signature for the spin singlet, a maximally entangled state. In a different setting, the entangled ground state in two tunnel-coupled quantum dots is detected via the Aharonov–Bohm oscillations in the co-tunneling current.
Mesoscopic shot noise is not only probabilistic: it has features which reflect quantum mechanical entanglement. We discuss recent proposals of orbital entanglement generation and detection in mesoscopic coherent conductors. Orbital entanglement avoids the difficulty of detecting spin and leads to simpler structures. Orbital entanglement schemes invoke two two-particle sources. The index of the source plays the role of a pseudo-spin. The rotation of qubits can be implemented with beam-splitters or even just quantum point contacts. Entanglement is detected via violation of a Bell inequality. The necessary correlations can be extracted from shot noise measurements. Possible two particle sources are Cooper pairs emitted from superconductors or even simpler electron-hole pairs generated at tunnel contacts or generated dynamically with the help of oscillating potentials.
We extend our previous work on shot noise for entangled and spin polarized electrons in a beam-splitter geometry with spin-orbit (SO) interaction in one of the incoming leads (lead 1). In addition to accounting for both the Dresselhaus and the Rashba spin-orbit terms, we present general formulas for the shot noise of singlet and triplets states derived within the scattering approach. We determine the full scattering matrix of the system for the case of leads with two orbital channels coupled via weak SO interactions inducing channel anticrossings. We show that this interband coupling coherently transfers electrons between the channels and gives rise to an additional modulation angle---dependent on both the Rashba and Dresselhaus interaction strengths---which allows for further independent coherent control of the electrons traversing the incoming leads. We derive explicit shot noise formulas for a variety of correlated pairs (e.g., Bell states) and lead spin polarizations. Interestingly, the singlet and each of the triplets defined along the quantization axis perpendicular to lead 1 (with the local SO interaction) and in the plane of the beam splitter display distinctive shot noise for injection energies near the channel anticrossings; hence, one can tell apart all the triplets, in addition to the singlet, through noise measurements. We also find that spin-orbit induced backscattering within lead 1 reduces the visibility of the noise oscillations, due to the additional partition noise in this lead. Finally, we consider injection of two-particle wavepackets into leads with multiple discrete states and find that two-particle entanglement can still be observed via noise bunching and antibunching.
We determine a lower bound for the entanglement of formation of pairs of electron spins injected into a mesoscopic conductor. The bound can be expressed in terms of experimentally accessible quantities, the zero-frequency current correlators (shot noise power or cross correlators) after transmission through an electronic beam splitter and can be used to gain information about the entanglement from experiment. Spin relaxation (T1 processes) and decoherence (T2) during the ballistic coherent transmission of carriers are taken into account within Bloch theory. A variable inhomogeneous magnetic field gives rise to a useful lower bound for the entanglement of arbitrary states. The decrease in entanglement due to thermally mixed states is studied. Both the entanglement of the output of a source (entangler) and T(1,2) can be determined from current correlators.
In this article, we have discussed about the scattering of charge and spin in spin-resolved mesoscopic systems. We have proposed a method to generate and detect the entanglement of electronic spin and electronic orbital degrees of freedom. It is observed that in a spin-resolved mesoscopic system, all form of entanglement existing between different electronic degrees of freedom can be generated. A method to detect Bell's inequality violation in terms of zero frequency current cross-correlators has been mentioned. Further, we have also studied the effect of quantum interference between spin flip and non-spin flip scattering matrices in determining the current and noise. We have obtained the expression for shot noise of spin and charge current when an arbitrarily polarised charge current is scattered at the spin resolved potential.
We discuss various approaches to create and detect electron spin entanglement, with a special emphasis on the study of the efficiency of a beam splitter as a detector for entangled electron pairs. In particular, we focus on the consequence of considering wavepacket states for the electrons as they enter the beam splitter in order to illustrate their particle characteristics. We then introduce double quantum dot as a possible source of spin entangled electrons. In particular, we show that a double quantum dot turnstile is, in principle, an efficient electron spin entangler or entanglement filter because of the exchange coupling between the dots and the tunable input/output potential barriers.