Production and detection of entangled electron-hole pairs in a degenerate electron gas

TL;DR

This paper theoretically demonstrates that shot noise in a two-channel conductor with a tunnel barrier can violate Bell inequalities due to entangled electron-hole pairs, without electron-electron interactions, suggesting a quantum non-locality test.

Contribution

It introduces a novel theoretical framework showing Bell inequality violation via entangled electron-hole pairs created by tunneling, without requiring interactions.

Findings

Shot noise violates Bell inequality in a two-channel conductor.

Entanglement quantified by concurrence related to transmission eigenvalues.

Proposes quantum Hall edge channels as experimental realization.

Abstract

We demonstrate theoretically that the shot noise produced by a tunnel barrier in a two-channel conductor violates a Bell inequality. The non-locality is shown to originate from entangled electron-hole pairs created by tunneling events -- without requiring electron-electron interactions. The degree of entanglement (concurrence) equals 2(T_1 T_2)^1/2 (T_1+T_2)^-1, with T_1,T_2 << 1 the transmission eigenvalues. A pair of edge channels in the quantum Hall effect is proposed as experimental realization.