Photon anti-bunching in high harmonic generation

Abstract:Photon anti-bunching is the direct evidence for the existence of photons without having a classical counterpart. Unlike bunching of photons, which can have a semi-classical description, the effect of photon anti-bunching can only be understood with quantized electromagnetic fields. However, for the process of high harmonic generation (HHG), where many photons of the driving field are upconverted to a single photon of higher energy, there is yet no clear evidence for the presence of individual photon emission. The key result of this work is the prediction of photon anti-bunching in the process of HHG, marking it the first theoretical discovery of non-classicality in the temporal correlations of HHG photons. While other non-classical signatures in HHG, such as sub-Poissonian statistics or squeezing, have been discussed for an ensemble of photons, the anti-bunching signature reported here is a signature of a single photon. This is achieved by using the recently developed Heisenberg picture approach for quantum optical HHG, revealing clear anti-bunching signatures in the intensity correlation function across the entire harmonic spectrum.

Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Optics (physics.optics)

arXiv:2606.17620 [quant-ph]

(or arXiv:2606.17620v1 [quant-ph] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2606.17620 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

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