Spin entanglement in elastic electron scattering from lithium atoms

Abstract

In two recent papers [Blum and Lohmann, Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 033201 (2016); Lohmann et al., Phys. Rev. A 94, 032331 (2016)], the possibility of continuously varying the degree of entanglement between an elastically scattered electron and the valence electron of an alkali-metal target was discussed. To estimate how well such a scheme may work in practice, we present results for elastic electron scattering from lithium in the energy regime of 1 – 5 eV and the full range of scattering angles 0 ∘ – 180 ∘ . The most promising regime for Bell correlations in this particular collision system are energies between about 1.5 and 3.0 eV, in an angular range around 110 ∘ ± 10 ∘ . In addition to the relative exchange asymmetry parameter, we present the differential cross section that is important when estimating the count rate and hence the feasibility of experiments using this system.