Electrostatic control of quantum dot entanglement induced by coupling to external reservoirs

We propose a quantum transport experiment to prepare and measure charge-entanglement between two electrostatically defined quantum dots. Coherent population trapping, as realized in cavity quantum electrodynamics, can be carried out by using a third quantum dot to play the role of the optical cavity. In our proposal, a pumping which is quantum mechanically indistinguishable for the quantum dots drives the system into a state with a high degree of entanglement. The whole effect can be switched on and off by means of a gate potential allowing both state preparation and entanglement detection by simply measuring the total current.