Time-resolved multimode heterodyne detection for dissecting coherent states of matter

Abstract

Unveiling and controlling the coherent evolution of low energy states is a key to attain light driven new functionalities of materials. Here we investigate the coherent evolution of non-equilibrium photon-phonon Raman interactions in the low photon number regime via femtosecond time-resolved multimode heterodyne detection. The time dependence of the weak probe spectral components is revealed by interferential amplification with shaped phase-locked reference fields that allow for a frequency selective amplification. We report measurements on $\alpha$-quartz that show that both amplitude and phase of the probe spectral components are modulated at the phonon frequency, but encode qualitatively different responses which are representative respectively of the time dependent position and momentum of the atoms. We stress that the sensitivity achieved here (1-10 photons per pulse) may be of relevance for both quantum information technologies and time domain studies on photosensitive materials.

References in corpus (12)

• Wavelength-Multiplexed Quantum Networks with Ultrafast Frequency Combs
• Coherent Order Parameter Oscillations in the Ground State of the Excitonic Insulator Ta2NiSe5
• Storage and retrieval of ultrafast single photons using a room-temperature diamond quantum memory
• Witnessing the formation and relaxation of massive quasi-particles in a strongly correlated electron system
• Quantum optical signal processing in diamond
• Spectrally resolved detection in transient-reflectivity measurements of coherent optical phonons in diamond
• Photon number statistics uncover the fluctuations in non-equilibrium lattice dynamics
• High-stability time-domain balanced homodyne detector for ultrafast optical pulse applications
• Phase separation in the non-equilibrium Verwey transition in magnetite
• Femtosecond Covariance Spectroscopy
• Quantum model for Impulsive Stimulated Raman Scattering
• Coherent amplitudon generation in K_0.3MoO_3 through ultrafast inter-band quasi particle decay

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Ultrafast pump-probe phase-randomized tomography