Ultrafast lattice dynamics with entangled photons

Non-classical light sources have recently gained interest due to the possibility of exploiting the material properties through the entanglement of various light degrees of freedom. Here, we explore the dynamics of optical phonons stimulated by a single photon of a time-energy entangled photon pair. The results show that light-induced material excitations exhibit time-energy entanglement characteristics. Consequently, the light-matter interaction becomes quasi-instantaneous even when the material is illuminated with photon wave packets with a large temporal width compared with all the characteristic time scales of the matter. Finally, the material time-energy entanglement characteristics strongly modify the properties of the transmitted and reflected light beams.