Three-qubit entanglement in the Bethe-Heitler process

Abstract

The familiar Bethe-Heitler process on the proton target $e+p\to e+p+\gamma$ is transformed into a laboratory for studying multiparticle entanglement. We discuss how bipartite and genuine tripartite entanglement between the final state electron, proton and photon are built up by successive $1\to 2$ and $2\to 2$ elementary interactions. We validate our argument by simulating events. Below 5 GeV center-of-mass energy, we identify more than 900 Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) states and 1200 W states, each with a fidelty exceeding 99%.