Assessing degrees of entanglement of phonon states in atomic Bose gases through the measurement of commuting observables

We show that measuring commuting observables can be sufficient to assess that a bipartite state is entangled according to either nonseparability or the stronger criterion of 'steerability'. Indeed, the measurement of a single observable might reveal the strength of the interferences between the two subsystems, as if an interferometer were used. For definiteness we focus on the two-point correlation function of density fluctuations obtained by in situ measurements in homogeneous one-dimensional cold atomic Bose gases. We then compare this situation to that found in transonic stationary flows mimicking a black hole geometry where correlated phonon pairs are emitted on either side of the sonic horizon by the analogue Hawking effect. We briefly apply our considerations to two recent experiments.