Electronic Hong-Ou-Mandel interferometer for multi-mode entanglement detection

TL;DR

This paper proposes a method using an electronic Hong-Ou-Mandel interferometer to detect multi-mode entanglement of electrons in mesoscopic conductors through current correlation measurements, extending previous work to multiple channels.

Contribution

It introduces a technique to detect multi-mode electron entanglement and estimate entanglement of formation in systems with multiple channels and degrees of freedom.

Findings

Zero-frequency current correlations reveal multi-mode entanglement.

Lower bounds on entanglement of formation can be established.

Method extends previous two-channel entanglement detection to many channels.

Abstract

We show that multi-mode entanglement of electrons in a mesoscopic conductor can be detected by a measurement of the zero-frequency current correlations in an electronic Hong-Ou-Mandel interferometer. By this mean, one can further establish a lower bound to the entanglement of formation of two-electron input states. Our results extend the work of Burkard and Loss [Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 087903 (2003)] to many channels and provide a way to test the existence of entangled states involving both orbital and spin degrees of freedom.