Hannover 2013 – scientific programme

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A: Fachverband Atomphysik

A 23: Dissertation Prize Symposium

A 23.4: Invited Talk

Wednesday, March 20, 2013, 12:30–13:00, E 415

Entanglement and Interference of Identical Particles — •Malte Christopher Tichy — Physikalisches Institut, Universität Freiburg, Germany — Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Aarhus, Denmark

Entanglement and the indistinguishability of identical particles pose a great challenge to our intuition, owing to the lack of classical counterparts. In particular, the connection between these phenomena is often elusive, especially for many particles. Here, we trace back correlated behavior, such as many-particle interference and entanglement, to the permutation symmetry of few and many identical particles.

We first restrict ourselves to two particles, comparing the classical behavior of distinguishable particles to the quantum dynamics of identical bosons and fermions. Bunching of bosons is opposed to anti-bunching of fermions, but both species are equivalent sources for bipartite entanglement. The realms of two indistinguishable and distinguishable particles are connected by a monotonic quantum-to-classical transition. As we move to larger systems, any attempt to understand many particles via the two-particle paradigm fails: In contrast to two-particle bunching and anti-bunching, the same correlations can be exhibited by bosons and fermions, and many bosons generate more multipartite entangled states than many fermions. Finally, the many-particle quantum-to-classical transition features experimentally confirmed non-monotonic structures. While the same physical principles govern small and large systems, it is the intrinsic complexity of many-particle interference that makes more particles behave differently.