Extraction of timelike entanglement from the quantum vacuum

An intriguing property of the massless quantum vacuum state is that it contains entanglement between both spacelike and timelike separated regions of space-time. The implications of timelike entanglement and its connection to standard entanglement, however, are unexplored. Here we show that timelike entanglement can be extracted from the massless Minkowski vacuum and converted into standard entanglement at a given time between two inertial, two-state detectors at the same spatial location: one coupled to the field in the past and the other coupled to the field in the future. The procedure used here demonstrates a time correlation as a requirement for extraction; e. g., if the past detector was active at a quarter to 12:00, then the future detector must wait to become active at precisely a quarter past 12:00 in order to achieve entanglement.