Coulomb interaction-driven entanglement of electrons on helium

Abstract

The generation and evolution of entanglement in quantum many-body systems is an active area of research that spans multiple fields, from quantum information science to the simulation of quantum many-body systems encountered in condensed matter, subatomic physics, and quantum chemistry. Motivated by recent experiments exploring quantum information processing systems with electrons trapped above the surface of cryogenic noble gas substrates, we theoretically investigate the generation of \emph{motional} entanglement between two electrons via their unscreened Coulomb interaction. The model system consists of two electrons confined in separate electrostatic traps which establish microwave frequency quantized states of their motion. We compute the motional energy spectra of the electrons, as well as their entanglement, by diagonalizing the model Hamiltonian with respect to a single-particle Hartree product basis. This computational procedure can in turn be employed for device design and guidance of experimental implementations. In particular, the theoretical tools developed here can be used for fine tuning and optimization of control parameters in future experiments with electrons trapped above the surface of superfluid helium or solid neon.