Entanglement certification of attosecond light fields with photoelectron interferometry

Abstract

The emergence of entangled quantum optical states in high-harmonic generation raises a fundamental problem about its characterization, namely, \textit{how can entanglement of extreme-ultraviolet radiation be certified for attosecond light fields?} Here, we provide experimentally accessible separability tests, particularly showing that attosecond photoelectron interferometry provides a direct solution to this problem. This is achieved by a quantum optical treatment of mapping photoelectron interferometry to the measurement of optical correlation functions. This yields a negative-partial-transpose witness for infrared-XUV entanglement and a sufficient witness of genuine multipartite entanglement without auxiliary optical measurements. We evaluate both witnesses on explicit optical states and identify how the protocol can be extended to XUV-XUV entanglement certification. Hence, we establish attosecond photoelectron interferometry as a general framework for entanglement certification across a wide range of optical frequencies.