Ultrafast dynamics of quantum matter driven by time-energy entangled photons

TL;DR

This paper investigates how time-energy entangled photons influence the ultrafast dynamics of quantum matter, revealing that entanglement can synchronize interactions and create matter excitations faster than the pulse duration.

Contribution

It introduces an exactly solvable model to analyze the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of light-matter interactions driven by entangled photons, highlighting the role of entanglement in modifying interaction time scales.

Findings

Entanglement suppresses delay between transmission and absorption events.

Entangled photons enable creating matter excitations faster than pulse width.

Driving with entangled photons imprints temporal correlations in matter.

Abstract

We study the dynamics of quantum matter interacting with time-energy entangled photons. We consider the stimulation of a collective mode of a two-dimensional material by means of one of the two partners of a time-energy entangled pair of photons. Using an exactly solvable model, we analyze the out-of-equilibrium properties of both light and matter degrees of freedom, and show how entanglement in the incident photons deeply modifies relevant time scales of the light-matter interaction process. We find that entanglement strongly suppresses the delay between the transmission and absorption events, which become synchronous in the limit of strongly entangled wave packets. By comparing numerical simulations with analytic modeling, we trace back this behavior to the representation of entangled wave packets in terms of a superposition of multiple train pulses containing an increasing number of ultrashort non-entangled packets. As a result, we show that the entangled driving allows the creation of a matter excitation on a time scale shorter than the temporal width of the pulse. Eventually, by analyzing temporal correlations of the excited matter degrees of freedom, we show that driving with entangled photons imprints characteristic temporal correlations of time-energy entangled modes in the matter degree of freedom.