Photon number statistics uncover the fluctuations in non-equilibrium lattice dynamics.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 26690958.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/ncomms10249 and PMC identifier 4703887.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Fluctuations of the atomic positions are at the core of a large class of unusual material properties ranging from quantum para-electricity to high temperature superconductivity. Their measurement in solids is the subject of an intense scientific debate focused on seeking a methodology capable of establishing a direct link between the variance of the atomic displacements and experimentally measurable observables. Here we address this issue by means of non-equilibrium optical experiments performed in shot-noise-limited regime. The variance of the time-dependent atomic positions and momenta is directly mapped into the quantum fluctuations of the photon number of the scattered probing light. A fully quantum description of the non-linear interaction between photonic and phononic fields is benchmarked by unveiling the squeezing of thermal phonons in α-quartz.