Entanglement in flavored scalar scattering

Abstract

Abstract We investigate quantum entanglement in high-energy 2 → 2 scalar scattering, where the scalars are characterized by an internal flavor quantum number acting like a qubit. Working at the 1-loop order in perturbation theory, we build the final-state density matrix as a function of the scattering amplitudes connecting the initial to the outgoing state. In this construction, the unitarity of the S-matrix is guaranteed at the required order by the optical theorem. We consider the post-scattering entanglement between the momentum and flavor degrees of freedom of the final-state particles, as well as the entanglement of the two-qubit flavor subsystem. In each case we identify the couplings of the scalar potential that can generate, destroy, or transfer entanglement between different bipartite subspaces of the Hilbert space.