Superconductor coupled to two Luttinger liquids as an entangler for electron spins

We consider an s-wave superconductor (SC) which is tunnel-coupled to two spatially separated Luttinger liquid (LL) leads. We demonstrate that such a setup acts as an entangler, i.e. it creates spin-singlets of two electrons which are spatially separated, thereby providing a source of electronic Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen pairs. We show that in the presence of a bias voltage, which is smaller than the energy gap in the SC, a stationary current of spin-entangled electrons can flow from the SC to the LL leads due to Andreev tunneling events. We discuss two competing transport channels for Cooper pairs to tunnel from the SC into the LL leads. On the one hand, the coherent tunneling of two electrons into the same LL lead is shown to be suppressed by strong LL correlations compared to single-electron tunneling into a LL. On the other hand, the tunneling of two spin-entangled electrons into different leads is suppressed by the initial spatial separation of the two electrons coming from the same Cooper pair. We show that the latter suppression depends crucially on the effective dimensionality of the SC. We identify a regime of experimental interest in which the separation of two spin-entangled electrons is favored. We determine the decay of the singlet state of two electrons injected into different leads caused by the LL correlations. Although the electron is not a proper quasiparticle of the LL, the spin information can still be transported via the spin density fluctuations produced by the injected spin-entangled electrons.Comment: 15 pages, 2 figure

Fabry-Pérot Oscillations in Correlated Carbon Nanotubes

We report the observation of an intriguing behavior in the transport properties of nanodevices operating in a regime between the Fabry-Perot and the Kondo limits. Using ultrahigh quality nanotube devices, we study how the conductance oscillates when sweeping the gate voltage. Surprisingly, we observe a fourfold enhancement of the oscillation period upon decreasing temperature, signaling a crossover from single-electron tunneling to Fabry-Nrot interference. These results suggest that the Fabry-Perot interference occurs in a regime where electrons are correlated. The link between the measured correlated Fabry-Perot oscillations and the SU(4) Kondo effect is discussed