Motivated by Bonahon's result for hyperbolic surfaces, we construct an analogue of the Patterson–Sullivan–Bowen–Margulis map from the Culler–Vogtmann outer space CV (Fk) into the space of projectivized geodesic currents on a free group. We prove that this map is a continuous embedding and thus obtain a new compactification of the outer space. We also prove that for every k ≥ 2 the minimum of the volume entropy of the universal covers of finite connected volume-one metric graphs with fundamental group of rank k and without degree-one vertices is equal to (3k − 3) log 2 and that this minimum is realized by trivalent graphs with all edges of equal lengths, and only by such graphs.