Heat capacity as an indicator of entanglement
- Author(s)
- Marcin Wiesniak, Vlatko Vedral, Caslav Brukner
- Abstract
We demonstrate that the presence of entanglement in macroscopic bodies (e.g., solids) in thermodynamical equilibrium could be revealed by measuring heat capacity. The idea is that if the system was in a separable state, then for certain Hamiltonians heat capacity would not tend asymptotically to zero as the temperature approaches absolute zero. Since this would contradict the third law of thermodynamics, one concludes that the system must contain entanglement. The separable bounds are obtained by minimalization of the heat capacity over separable states and using its universal low-temperature behavior. Our results open up a possibility to use standard experimental techniques of solid-state physics-namely, heat-capacity measurements-to detect entanglement in macroscopic samples.
- Organisation(s)
- Quantum Optics, Quantum Nanophysics and Quantum Information
- External organisation(s)
- Erwin Schrödinger Institut, University of Leeds
- Journal
- Physical Review B
- Volume
- 78
- No. of pages
- 6
- ISSN
- 1098-0121
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.78.064108
- Publication date
- 2008
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 103026 Quantum optics
- Portal url
- https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/en/publications/heat-capacity-as-an-indicator-of-entanglement(4ea2017a-4a5d-4d7b-ae91-fcc720ddfdc2).html