Elementary charge transfer processes in a superconductor-ferromagnet entangler

¹  Department of Physics, Norwegian University of Science and Technology - N-7491 Trondheim, Norway
²  Centre for Advanced Study - Drammensveien 78, N-0271 Oslo, Norway
³  University of Konstanz, Department of Physics - D-78457 Konstanz, Germany

Corresponding author: jan.morten@ntnu.no

Received: 23 October 2007
Accepted: 8 December 2007

Abstract

We study the production of spatially separated entangled electrons in ferromagnetic leads from Cooper pairs in a superconducting lead. We give a complete description of the elementary charge transfer processes, i) transfer of Cooper pairs out of the superconductor by Andreev reflection and ii) distribution of the entangled quasiparticles among the ferromagnetic leads, in terms of their statistics. The probabilities that entangled electrons flow into spatially separated leads are completely determined by experimentally measurable tunnel conductances and polarizations. Finally, we investigate how currents, noise and cross-correlations are affected by transport of entangled electrons.