Beatrix C. Hiesmayr (Vienna): Metabolism Imaging via Quantum Entanglement & Entanglement Detection

The detection of the two high energetic photons coming from the annihilation of an electron and a positron is a well-established successful technology to image metabolic processes in living bodies (PET: Positron Emission Tomography). During such a typical scan positronium atoms are formed which can as well decay into three photons. Due to technical limitations such events have never been registered, however, a new technology, the J-PET device [1], will change that. Theoretical computations [2] show that the three photons are entangled and, surprisingly, even genuinely multipartiteentangled, which is a very strong type of entanglement. Even more surprising, under mixing genuinely multipartite entanglement survives.Observing the manifestations of entanglement may open a plethora of possibilities: for example, in the above picture, for any pixel one would also gain quantum information which may equip us with details on the microscopic scale. Let us also mention that our recent studies have shown a difference in the lifetimes of para- and ortho-positronium for cancerous and healthy human tissues. Furthermore, we present our theoretical progress in entanglement detection, e.g. based on mutually unbiased bases (MUBs) or symmetric informationally complete (SIC) operators, including some experiments that exploited those [3]. Last but not least, we present some of our recent results how quantum information theoretic considerations may solve some of the long awaited problems of Neutrino Physics, such as the mass hierarchy problem or whether neutrinos are Dirac or Majorana particles [4].
[1] e.g.: D. Kamińska, et al., Eur. Phys. J. C 76, 445 (2016) [2] B.C. Hiesmayr and P. Moskal, Scientific Reports 7, 15349 (2017). [3] e.g.: B.C. Hiesmayr, M.J.A. de Dood and W. Löffler, Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 073601 (2016); G. Carvacho, F. Graffitti, V. D'Ambrosio, B. C. Hiesmayr and F. Sciarrino, Scientific Reports 7, 13265 (2017). [4] A. Capolupo , S. M. Giampaolo, , B. C. Hiesmayr and V. Vitiello, accepted Physics Letters B (2018).