Entanglement and pair production in intense electromagnetic fields

Abstract

We investigate the spin correlations between electron-positron pairs created from a photon when it scatters in a high-intensity laser pulse via the nonlinear Breit-Wheeler process. We find that the spin states of the generated electron-positron pair can exhibit strong entanglement, with the degree being sensitive to the photon energy, laser intensity, and the relative polarisation of the photon and laser pulse. Photons with a high degree of polarisation can create strongly entangled pairs, and this entanglement can be maintained in the high-intensity (non-perturbative) regime. We find that if the photons are provided by a Compton source, strongly spin-entangled electron-positron pairs can be generated with technology available today.