Eur. Phys. J. D (2012) 66: 312
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2012-30469-5

Regular Article

Electron interference and entanglement in coupled 1D systems with noise

¹ ARCES, Alma Mater Studiorum, Università di Bologna, Via Toffano 2/2, 40125 Bologna, Italy
² Dipartimento di Scienze Fisiche, Informatiche e Matematiche, Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia, Via Campi 213/A, 41125 Modena, Italy
³ Centro S3, CNR-Istituto Nanoscienze, Via Campi 213/A, 41125 Modena, Italy

^a e-mail: fabrizio.buscemi@unimore.it

Received: 25 July 2012
Received in final form: 10 October 2012
Published online: 11 December 2012

Abstract

We estimate the role of noise in the formation of entanglement and in the appearance of single- and two-electron interference in systems of coupled one-dimensional channels. Two cases are considered: a single-particle interferometer and a two-particle interferometer exploiting Coulomb interaction. In both of them, environmental noise yields a randomization of the carrier phases. Our results assess how the complementarity relation linking single-particle behavior to nonlocal quantities (such as entanglement and environment-induced decoherence) acts in electron interferometry. We show that in an experimental implementation of the setups examined, one- and two-electron detection probability at the output drains can be used to evaluate the decoherence and the degree of entanglement.