Flavor oscillations in elementary particle physics are related to multi-mode entanglement of single-particle states. We show that mode entanglement can be expressed in terms of flavor transition probabilities, and therefore that single-particle entangled states acquire a precise operational characterization in the context of particle mixing. We treat in detail the physically relevant cases of two- and three-flavor neutrino oscillations, including the effective measure of CP violation. We discuss experimental schemes for the transfer of the quantum information encoded in single-neutrino states to spatially delocalized two-flavor charged lepton states, thus showing, at least in principle, that single-particle entangled states of neutrino mixing are legitimate physical resources for quantum information tasks.

5 pages, 5 figures