Tunable quantum light by modulated free electrons

Abstract

Nonclassical states of light are fundamental in various applications, spanning quantum computation to enhanced sensing. Fast free electrons, which emit light into photonic structures through the mechanism of spontaneous emission, represent a promising platform for generating diverse types of states. Indeed, the intrinsic connection between the input electron wave function and the output light field suggests that electron-shaping schemes, based on light-induced scattering, facilitates their synthesis. In this article, we present a theoretical framework capable of predicting the final optical density matrix of a generic N-electron state that can also account for post-sample energy filtering. By using such framework, we study the modulation-dependent fluctuations of the N-electron emission and identify regions of Poissonian and super-Poissonian statistics. In the single-electron case, we show how coherent states with nearly 90% purity can be formed by pre-filtering a portion of the spectrum after modulation, and how non-Gaussian states are generated after a precise energy measurement. Furthermore, we present a strategy combining a single-stage electron modulation and post-filtering to harness tailored light states, such as squeezed vacuum, cat, and triangular cat states, with fidelity close to 100%.

References in corpus (8)

• Mid-infrared plasmons in scaled graphene nanostructures
• Attosecond Electron Pulse Trains and Quantum State Reconstruction in Ultrafast Transmission Electron Microscopy
• Ponderomotive generation and detection of attosecond free-electron pulse trains
• Inelastic ponderomotive scattering of electrons at a high-intensity optical travelling wave in vacuum
• Spatiotemporal Electron-Beam Focusing through Parallel Interactions with Shaped Optical Fields
• Toward Optimum Coupling between Free Electrons and Confined Optical Modes
• Strongly correlated multi-electron bunches from interaction with quantum light
• Selective probing of longitudinal and transverse plasmon modes with electron phase-matching

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Electrons herald non-classical light
• Coherent regime of Kapitza-Dirac effect with electrons