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arXiv:2208.01335 · Physical Review Letters

Entangled X-Ray Photon Pair Generation by Free-Electron Lasers

Linfeng Zhang, Zunqi Li, Dongyu Liu, Haitan Xu, Haitan Xu, Zheng Li

Published Aug 14, 2023• 14 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We investigate entangled x-ray photon pair emissions in a free-electron laser (FEL) and establish a quantum electrodynamical theory for coherently amplified entangled photon pair emission from microbunched electron pulses in the undulator. We provide a scheme to generate highly entangled x-ray photon pairs and numerically demonstrate the properties of entangled emission, which is of great importance in x-ray quantum optics. Our work shows a unique advantage of FELs in entangled x-ray photon pair generation.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.131.073601

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Understanding and harnessing X-ray quantum effects could open new, to our knowledge, frontiers in imaging and quantum optics. In this study, we measured the process of X-ray parametric down-conversion, where a single high-energy X-ray photon splits into two lower-energy photons. Using the SACLA X-ray free electron laser in Japan at 9.83 keV, we found clear evidence that pairs of photons were produced along the energy-angle relationship that conserved both energy and momentum, as predicted for down-conversion, and consistent with quantum entanglement of X-ray photons. By matching specific photon pairs for energy and momentum conservation, we observe a signal rate of 1250 pairs per hour, confirming that correlated photon pairs can be generated and observed in the absence of explicit time correlations. Our results show that with further refinement, the number of entangled photons produced per laser pulse could increase by an order of magnitude. This paves the way for demonstrating quantum-enhanced X-ray imaging, and confirmation of X-ray photon entanglement.
Crystalline undulator radiation (CUR) is emitted by charged particles channeling through a periodically bent crystal. We show that entangled high-energy photons of the order of 100 MeV can be generated from CUR and obtain the quantum entanglement properties of the double-photon emission of CUR with a nonperturbative quantum field theory. We demonstrate that the crystalline undulator (CU) can induce a 3D free-electron lattice with premicrobunched electrons, and the resulting free-electron lattice can enhance the entangled high-energy photon emission for certain angles by phase matching. We also examine the effects of demodulation and dechanneling during the electron beam channeling process, and show the dependence of the dechanneling and demodulation lengths on the undulator parameters.
Entangled photons are a key resource in quantum technologies. While intense laser light propagating in nonlinear crystals is conventionally used to generate entangled photons, such schemes have low efficiency due to the weak nonlinear response of known materials and losses associated with in/out photon coupling. Here, we show how to generate entangled polariton pairs directly within optical waveguides using free electrons. The measured energy loss of undeflected electrons heralds the production of counter-propagating polariton pairs entangled in energy and emission direction. For illustration, we study the excitation of plasmon polaritons in metal strip waveguides that strongly enhance light-matter interactions, rendering two-plasmon generation dominant over single-plasmon excitation. We demonstrate that electron energy losses detected within optimal frequency ranges can reliably signal the generation of plasmon pairs entangled in energy and momentum. Our proposed scheme is directly applicable to other types of optical waveguides for in situ generation of entangled photon pairs.