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Physics-Uspekhi

Spin-entangled electrons in mesoscopic systems

Guido Burkard, Eugene V. Sukhorukov, Patrik Recher, Daniel Loss

Published Oct 1, 2001• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

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.

DOI
10.1070/1063-7869/44/10s/s28

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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.
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.
We propose and analyze a spin-entangler for electrons based on an s-wave superconductor coupled to two quantum dots, each of which is coupled to normal Fermi leads. We show that in the presence of a voltage bias and in the Coulomb blockade regime two correlated electrons provided by the Andreev process can coherently tunnel from the superconductor via different dots into different leads. The spin singlet coming from the Cooper pair remains preserved in this process, and the setup provides a source of mobile and nonlocal spin-entangled electrons. The transport current is calculated and shown to be dominated by a two-particle Breit-Wigner resonance that allows the injection of two spin-entangled electrons into different leads at exactly the same orbital energy, which is a crucial requirement for the detection of spin entanglement via noise measurements. The coherent tunneling of both electrons into the same lead is suppressed by the on-site Coulomb repulsion and/or the superconducting gap, while the tunneling into different leads is suppressed through the initial separation of the tunneling electrons. In the regime of interest the particle-hole excitations of the leads are shown to be negligible. The Aharonov-Bohm oscillations in the current are shown to contain single- and two-electron periods with amplitudes that both vanish with increasing Coulomb repulsion albeit differently fast.
We review our recent work towards quantum communication in a solid-state environment with qubits carried by electron spins. We propose three schemes to produce spin-entangled electrons, where the required separation of the partner electrons is achieved via Coulomb interaction. The non-product spin-states originate either from the Cooper pairs found in a superconductor, or in the ground state of a quantum dot with an even number of electrons. In a second stage, we show how spin-entanglement carried by a singlet can be detected in a beam-splitter geometry by an increased (bunching) or decreased (antibunching) noise signal. We also discuss how a local spin-orbit interaction can be used to provide a continuous modulation of the noise as a signature of entanglement. Finally, we review how one can use a quantum dot as a spin-filter, a spin-memory read-out, a probe for single-spin decoherence and, ultimately, a single-spin measurement apparatus.
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.
Addressing the feasibility of quantum communication with electrons we consider entangled spin states of electrons in a double-dot which is weakly coupled to leads. We show that the entanglement of two electrons in the double-dot can be detected in mesoscopic transport and noise measurements. In the Coulomb blockade and cotunneling regime the singlet and triplet states lead to phase-coherent current and noise contributions of opposite signs and to Aharonov-Bohm and Berry phase oscillations. These oscillations are a genuine two-particle effect and provide a direct measure of nonlocality in entangled states. We show that the ratio of zero-frequency noise to current is equal to the electron charge.
An electron teleportation protocol, inspired by the scenario by Bennett et al., is proposed in a mesoscopic set-up. A superconducting circuit allows to both inject and measure entangled singlet electron pairs in an array of three normal quantum dots. The selection of the teleportation process is achieved in the steady state with the help of two superconducting dots and appropriate gating. Teleportation of the electron spin is detected by measuring the spin-polarized current through the normal dot array. This current is perfectly correlated to the pair current flowing inside the superconducting circuit. The classical channel required by Bennett's protocol, which signals the completion of a teleportation cycle, is identified with the detection of an electron charge in the superconducting circuit.