Generation of Massively Entangled Bright States of Light during Harmonic Generation in Resonant Media

authored by

Sili Yi, Nikolai D. Klimkin, Graham Gardiner Brown, Olga Smirnova, Serguei Patchkovskii, Ihar Babushkin, Misha Ivanov

Abstract

At the fundamental level, full description of light-matter interaction requires quantum treatment of both matter and light. However, for standard light sources generating intense laser pulses carrying quadrillions of photons in a coherent state, the classical description of light during intense laser-matter interaction has been expected to be adequate. Here, we show how nonlinear optical response of matter can be controlled to generate dramatic deviations from this standard picture, including generation of several squeezed and entangled harmonics of the incident laser light. In particular, such nontrivial quantum states of harmonics are generated as soon as one of the harmonics induces a transition between different laser-dressed states of the material system. Such transitions generate an entangled light-matter wave function, which can generate quantum states of harmonics even in the absence of a quantum driving field or material correlations. In turn, entanglement of the material system with a single harmonic generates and controls entanglement between different harmonics. Hence, nonlinear media that are near resonant with at least one of the harmonics appear to be quite attractive for controlled generation of massively entangled quantum states of light. Our analysis opens remarkable opportunities at the interface of attosecond physics and quantum optics, with implications for quantum information science.

Organisation(s)

Institute of Quantum Optics
PhoenixD: Photonics, Optics, and Engineering - Innovation Across Disciplines

External Organisation(s)

Max Born Institute for Nonlinear Optics and Short Pulse Spectroscopy im Forschungsbund Berlin e.V. (MBI)
Technische Universität Berlin
Technion-Israel Institute of Technology
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (HU Berlin)

Type

Article

Journal

Physical Review X

Volume

15

No. of pages

17

ISSN

2160-3308

Publication date

05.02.2025

Publication status

Published

Peer reviewed

Yes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

General Physics and Astronomy

Electronic version(s)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2401.02817 (Access: Open)
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.15.011023 (Access: Open)