Mapping the spatial distribution of entanglement in optical lattices

Abstract

We study the entangled states that can be generated using two species of atoms trapped in independently movable, two-dimensional optical lattices. We show that using two sets of measurements it is possible to measure a set of entanglement witness operators distributed over arbitrarily large regions of the lattice, and use these witnesses to produce two-dimensional plots of the entanglement content of these states. We also discuss the influence of noise on the states and on the witnesses, as well as connections to ongoing experiments.