High-order correlations and ultrafast Wigner negativities in bright-squeezed-vacuum-driven high-harmonic generation
Sebastián de-la-Peña, Heiko Appel, Marcelo F. Ciappina +2 more
High-harmonic generation (HHG) is a prototypical strong-field process in which intense light drives matter to emit radiation at integer multiples of the driving frequency. Extending HHG into the quantum-optical regime offers new opportunities to probe and control strongly nonlinear light-matter interactions using nonclassical states of light. Yet describing this regime requires a fully quantum treatment of the correlated electron-photon dynamics, which becomes computationally challenging for broadband, strongly squeezed fields. Here we solve the quantum-electrodynamical dynamics of a two-level system driven by bright squeezed vacuum in a converged multimode Hilbert space. Both the driving field and emitted harmonics are fully quantized, with the light-matter interaction treated nonperturbatively. This enables direct access to the multimode quantum state and its higher-order correlations beyond semiclassical sampling or perturbative descriptions. We show that squeezed-vacuum driving produces harmonic emission with qualitatively distinct second- and third-order photon correlations compared with coherent excitation. Moreover, back-action from the driven emitter strongly reshapes the incident squeezed field, generating pronounced Wigner-function negativities that evolve on attosecond timescales. Our results establish a fully quantum framework for broadband strong-field dynamics with squeezed light and provide a route to predicting and interpreting quantum-HHG experiments and their extension to more complex emitters.
physics.opticsCross-listedarXiv:2609.20559•Sep 18, 2026•0 citations