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Optics Express

Generation of X-ray photon echo mediated by collective nuclear excitation

Yangyi Wang, Nan Xue, Yunyu Wang, Xuanzeng Chen, Zinan Cui, Xiangjin Kong, Y. G.

Published Jul 29, 2025• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Photon echo is a fundamental phenomenon that enables the coherent re-emission of a photon after a controlled delay, playing a crucial role in quantum information processing. Here, we propose a scheme for generating X-ray photon echoes via the dynamical control of collective nuclear excitation using an applied magnetic field. This mechanism facilitates the controllable exchange of nuclear coherence and the photonic field, enabling the on-demand generation of individual X-ray photons. Our scheme broadens the possibilities for realizing quantum qubits in the X-ray regime and advancing X-ray quantum optics.

DOI
10.1364/oe.564857

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Photon echo is a fundamental phenomenon that enables the coherent re-emission of a photon after a controlled delay, playing a crucial role in quantum information processing. Here, we propose a scheme for generating X-ray photon echoes via the dynamical control of collective nuclear excitation using an applied magnetic field. This mechanism facilitates the controllable exchange of nuclear coherence and the photonic field, enabling the on-demand generation of individual X-ray photons. Our scheme broadens the possibilities for realizing quantum qubits in the X-ray regime and advancing X-ray quantum optics.
Photonic qubits lie at the heart of quantum information technology, often encoding information in their polarization state. So far, only low-frequency optical and infrared photons have been employed as flying qubits, as the resources that are at present easiest to control. With their essentially different way of interacting with matter, x-ray qubits would bear however relevant advantages: they are extremely robust, penetrate deep through materials, and can be focused down to few-nm waveguides, allowing unprecedented miniaturization. Also, x-rays are resonant to nuclear transitions, which are very well isolated from the environment and present long coherence times. Here, we show theoretically that x-ray polarization qubits can be dynamically controlled by nuclear Mössbauer resonances. The control knob is played by nuclear hyperfine magnetic fields, that allow via fast rotations precise processing of single x-ray quanta polarization. With such rotations, single-qubit and binary logical operations such as a destructive C-NOT gate can be implemented.
We introduce a technique to store and manipulate single x-ray photons, which relies on dynamically controlled absorption via nuclear hyperfine magnetic splitting. This scheme is inherently suitable for storage, on-demand generation, and dynamical manipulation of single x-ray photons, for instance, the manipulation of the temporal shape, temporal splitting, the interference between x-ray photons, and the control of the polarization. Our approach provides more opportunities in x-ray quantum information.
Superradiant burst often arises from photon-mediated interactions within an excited ensemble of emitters, where collective emission leads to a sharp increase in photon intensity. Here, we focus on a nuclear ensemble with cooperative excitations and propose, for the first time, the generation of superradiant burst of x-ray photons. We establish the required excitation conditions to observe x-ray superradiant bursts, offering guidance for the experiments utilizing state-of-the-art x-ray sources. Building on this, we investigate the dynamics of the x-ray superradiant burst and reveal novel nonlinear relationships between the time required to reach the peak intensity and the excitation number, as well as between the peak intensity and the excitation number. Additionally, we introduce a dimensionless parameter that serves as an indicator of the system, reflecting how strongly the burst can occur in a given configuration. Our work provides fresh insights into the understanding of collective emission in many-body x-ray-nuclei systems within the nonlinear regime, opening new avenues for x-ray quantum optics.
Waveguides offer a means to controllably couple atomic ensembles to the electromagnetic field therein. Here, we demonstrate x-ray propagation in planar thin-film waveguides coupled to Mössbauer nuclei under collective resonant excitation by short pulses of synchrotron radiation. We record x-ray photons that have been emitted into resonant modes of the waveguide. Depending on the geometry and mode of excitation, two fundamentally different signatures of the collective emission are observed, for which we present a unifying theoretical model. Our results form a new platform for waveguide quantum electrodynamics in the hard x-ray regime with the potential to provide a coherent narrow band source of x-rays on the nanometer scale.
The control of light-matter interaction at the quantum level usually requires coherent laser fields. But already an exchange of virtual photons with the electromagnetic vacuum field alone can lead to quantum coherences, which subsequently suppress spontaneous emission. We demonstrate such spontaneously generated coherences (SGC) in a large ensemble of nuclei operating in the x-ray regime, resonantly coupled to a common cavity environment. The observed SGC originates from two fundamentally different mechanisms related to cooperative emission and magnetically controlled anisotropy of the cavity vacuum. This approach opens new perspectives for quantum control, quantum state engineering and simulation of quantum many-body physics in an essentially decoherence-free setting.
We have identified a mechanism of collective nuclear de-excitation in a Bose–Einstein condensate of 135Cs atoms in their isomeric state, 135mCs, suitable for the generation of coherent gamma photons. The process described here relies on coherence transfer from the Bose–Einstein condensate to the photon field, leading to collective decay triggered by spontaneous emission of a gamma photon. The mechanism differs from single-pass amplification, which cannot occur in atomic systems due to the nuclear recoil and the associated large shift between absorption and emission lines, nor does it require the large densities necessary for standard Dicke super-radiance. This overcomes the limitations that have been hindering the production of coherent gamma photons in many systems. Therefore, we propose an approach for generation of coherent gamma rays, which relies on a combination of well established techniques of nuclear and atomic physics, and can be realized with currently available technology.