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  • Letter
  • Open Access

Attosecond entangled photons from two-photon decay of metastable atoms: A source for attosecond experiments and beyond

Yimeng Wang1,*, Siddhant Pandey1, Chris H. Greene1,2, and Niranjan Shivaram1,2,†

  • 1Department of Physics and Astronomy, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907, USA
  • 2Purdue Quantum Science and Engineering Institute, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907, USA

  • *wang3607@purdue.edu
  • †niranjan@purdue.edu
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Phys. Rev. Research 4, L032038 – Published 6 September, 2022

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.4.L032038

Abstract

We propose the generation of attosecond entangled biphotons in the extreme-ultraviolet regime by two-photon decay of a metastable atomic state as a source similar to spontaneous parametric down-conversion photons. The 1s2s S01 metastable state in helium decays to the ground state by the emission of two energy-time entangled photons with a photon bandwidth equal to the total energy spacing of 20.62 eV. This results in a pair correlation time in the attosecond regime making these entangled photons a highly suitable source for attosecond pump-probe experiments. The biphoton generation rate from a direct four-photon excitation of helium at 240 nm is calculated and used to assess some feasible schemes to generate these biphotons. Possible applications of entangled biphotons in attosecond timescale experiments, and a discussion of their potential to reach the zeptosecond regime are presented.

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Phys. Rev. Research 4, L032038– Published 6 September, 2022
  • Received 3 June 2022
  • Accepted 17 August 2022
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

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