Strongly correlated multielectron bunches from interaction with quantum light

Abstract

Strongly correlated electron systems are a cornerstone of modern physics, being responsible for groundbreaking phenomena from superconducting magnets to quantum computing. In most cases, correlations in electrons arise exclusively because of Coulomb interactions. In this work, we reveal that free electrons interacting simultaneously with a light field can become highly correlated via mechanisms beyond Coulomb interactions. In the case of two electrons, the resulting Pearson correlation coefficient for the joint probability distribution of the output electron energies is enhanced by more than 13 orders of magnitude compared to that of electrons interacting with the light field in succession (one after another). These highly correlated electrons are the result of momentum and energy exchange between the participating electrons via the external quantum light field. Our findings pave the way to the creation and control of highly correlated free electrons for applications including quantum information and ultrafast imaging.

Strong Coupling and Single-Photon Nonlinearity in Free-Electron Quantum Optics

“…In the proposed system, owing to the availability of a large coupling coefficient g Q , such effects can in principle be observed even after a single pass of a single free electron, instead of slower, multielectron consecutive interactions previously considered in the literature. , As shown in Figure , the strong nonlinearity induced by free electrons also results in complex multimode dynamics that are reminiscent of broadband parametric down conversion in the deep quantum regime . Extending these ideas to correlated many-electron experiments − can reveal further nonlinear and strong coupling effects.…”