Attosecond Access to the Quantum Noise of Light
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Quantum Physics arXiv:2604.13485 (quant-ph) [Submitted on 15 Apr 2026] Title:Attosecond Access to the Quantum Noise of Light Authors:En-Rui Zhou, Yi-Jia Mao, Pei-Lun He, Feng He View a PDF of the paper titled Attosecond Access to the Quantum Noise of Light, by En-Rui Zhou and 3 other authors View PDF Abstract:Characterizing the quantum state of intense light fields on sub-cycle timescales remains beyond the reach of existing methods. Here, we show that attosecond streaking provides direct, phase-sensitive access to the quantum properties of the driving field through delay-resolved photoelectron spectra. Using a Feynman--Vernon treatment, we decompose the influence of the quantized driving field on the photoelectron into coherent and fluctuation contributions. This yields a simple, moment-based characterization of the light state: the first moment of the photoelectron momentum distribution reveals the coherent displacement, while the second central moment captures the fluctuation contribution and, for squeezed states, exhibits a clear modulation at twice the driving frequency, directly signaling phase-sensitive quantum noise. Time-dependent Schrödinger equation simulations confirm these relations and enable retrieval of the coherent phase, the squeezing phase, and the relative strengths of the coherent and fluctuation contributions from delay-resolved spectra. Taken together, these results establish attosecond streaking as a route to sub-cycle quantum-optical metrology in the strong-field regime. Comments: Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Atomic Physics (physics.atom-ph) Cite as: arXiv:2604.13485 [quant-ph] (or arXiv:2604.13485v1 [quant-ph] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2604.13485 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration) Submission history From: Pei-Lun He [view email] [v1] Wed, 15 Apr 2026 05:18:33 UTC (1,966 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled Attosecond Access to the Quantum Noise of Light, by En-Rui Zhou and 3 other authorsView PDFTeX Source view license Current browse context: quant-ph new | recent | 2026-04 Change to browse by: physics physics.atom-ph References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADSGoogle Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Loading... BibTeX formatted citation × loading... Data provided by: Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub (What is DagsHub?) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate (What is Replicate?) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender (What is CORE?) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs. Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)