Quantum control of entangled photon-pair generation in electron-ion collisions driven by laser-synthesized photoelectron wave packets

Correlated electron-dynamics resulting from electron-ion collisions appears in a variety of competing rearrangement channels, such as inelastic scattering and dielectronic recombination, i.e., capture of the incident electron via compound resonance states. These transient doubly-excited resonance states may, in turn, decay via two competing processes: autoionization or radiative stabilization. Here, we propose an extension of coherent control using laser-synthesized photoelectron wave packets as the incident projectile to control competing rearrangement channels as well as the various processes within each channel. Most notably, this enables us to control the emission of photons in electron-ion collisions via two mechanisms: (i) radiative decay involving a manifold of different de-excitation pathways contributing to the same photon mode within an isolated rearrangement channel [1], or (ii) decay of a coherent superposition thereof, prepared by the projectile. Using a time-dependent two-Hilbert space formulation of multichannel scattering theory of rearrangement collisions, we demonstrate quantum control of entangled photon-pair generation in radiative cascade decay for both cases. The coherence of the incident electron wave packet is engineered by pulse-shaping the ionizing laser field promoting interferometric resonantly-enhanced multi-photon ionization. [1] arXiv:2011.09649