Entanglement at finite temperatures in mesoscopic conductors

by Peter Samuelsson (University of Lund, Sweden)

Friday 31 Oct 2008, 14:15 → 15:15 Europe/Zurich

Universite de Geneve, Auditoire Stueckelberg

We present a theory for two-particle entanglement generation and detection in mesoscopic conductors at finite temperature. The entanglement detectable by means of currents and zero frequency current correlators is quantified in terms of the reduced density matrix. Applying the theory to the recent experiment [Neder et al., Nature 448, 333 (2007)] on a fermionic Hanbury-Brown-Twiss two-particle interferometer we find that while the emitted state is clearly entangled, the detectable entanglement is close to zero. This suggests that further decreasing the temperature and dephasing in the experiment is necessary for an unambiguous demonstration of quasiparticle entanglement.