Strong-field physics driven by quantum light

Max Planck Quantum Matter Seminar

  • Date: Jun 1, 2023
  • Time: 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM (Local Time Germany)
  • Speaker: Matan Even Tzur
  • Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa
  • Location: CFEL (Bldg. 99)
  • Room: Seminar Room V, O1.109, and on Zoom
  • Host: Hannes Huebener

High harmonic generation (HHG) is an extremely nonlinear process in which matter is driven by intense light to emit coherent ultraviolet and X-ray radiation. Until now, all HHG experiments employed classical laser light (i.e., light in a Glauber coherent state) as the driving field. However, advances in the generation of intense ultrashort pulses of squeezed light suggest that driving extremely nonlinear processes using non-classical light is becoming experimentally feasible – paving the way toward a new era of strong-field quantum optics, and quantum-optical attosecond science.

This talk presents recent theoretical advances in HHG and strong-field physics driven by quantum light. Firstly, we show that squeezed states of light, such as bright squeezed vacuum, can dramatically extend the cutoff energy of HHG relative to classical light of the same intensity. Then, we show that the photon statistics of the driving field steer the underlying electronic trajectories of HHG through an effective photon statistics force. In turn, the altered trajectories modulate the emitted attosecond pulses. Finally, we show that the quantum state of the driving IR field imprints on the emitted XUV radiation, enabling, for example, the generation of squeezed high harmonics if driven by squeezed light.


Reference:

Photon-statistics force in ultrafast electron dynamics
Matan Even Tzur, Michael Birk, Alexey Gorlach, Michael Krueger, Ido Kaminer, Oren Cohen
https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.03091

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