Generation of pseudo-sunlight via quantum entangled photons and the interaction with molecules

Abstract

Light incident upon molecules triggers fundamental processes in diverse systems present in nature. However, under natural conditions such as sunlight illumination, it is impossible to assign known times for photon arrival due to continuous pumping, and therefore the photoinduced processes cannot be easily investigated. In this work, we demonstrate theoretically that the characteristics of sunlight photons, such as photon number statistics and spectral distribution, can be emulated through a quantum entangled photon pair generated with parametric down-conversion (PDC). We show that the average photon number of sunlight in a specific frequency spectrum, e.g., the visible light, can be reconstructed by adjusting the PDC crystal length and pump frequency, and thereby the molecular dynamics induced by the pseudo-sunlight can be investigated. The entanglement time, which is the hallmark of quantum entangled photons, can serve as a control knob to resolve the photon arrival times, enabling investigations on real-time dynamics triggered by pseudo-sunlight photons.