arXiv subjects

Sergio Carbajo

Publications and source records attributed to Sergio Carbajo.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Learning high-dimensional quantum entanglement through physics-guided neural networks

High-gain spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) produces bright squeezed vacuum with rich high-dimensional entanglement, but its output is inherently multimodal and non-perturbative, making the full modal characterization a major computational bottleneck. We propose a physics-guided deep neural network that reconstructs the source's modal fingerprint: the high-dimensional correlation signature across radial and azimuthal indices. We designed a FiLM-modulated convolutional architecture that predicts the joint (m,l) distribution, and training is driven by a hybrid loss that couples data-driven metrics (JSD, KL, MSE, Wasserstein) with a soft orbital-angular-momentum (OAM) conservation term, providing an essential inductive bias toward physically consistent solutions. Across gain regimes, our method achieves high-fidelity reconstruction with average JSD of 1.96e-3, WEMD of 1.54e-3, and KL divergence of 7.85e-3, delivering an approximate 128-fold speedup over full numerical simulation and more than 30% accuracy gains over U-Net baselines. These results demonstrate that physics-guided learning, via a soft OAM-conservation regularizer and physically generated training targets, enables rapid and data-efficient modal characterization. Compared with traditional numerical simulation, our mesh-free method has demonstrated good generalization with limited or contaminated training data and has enabled fast "online" prediction of the quantum dynamics of a high-dimensional entanglement system for real-world experimental implementation.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2026

Ultrafast Pulse Retrieval from Partial FROG Traces Using Implicit Diffusion Models

Ultrashort laser pulses enable attosecond-scale measurements and drive breakthroughs across science and technology, but their routine use hinges on reliable pulse characterization. Frequency-Resolved Optical Gating (FROG) is a leading solution, forming a spectrogram by scanning the delay between two pulse replicas and recording the nonlinear signal spectrum. In online settings, however, dense delay-frequency scans are costly or impractical-especially for long pulses, wavelength regimes with limited spectrometer coverage (e.g., UV), or hardware with coarse resolution, yielding severely undersampled FROG traces. Existing reconstruction methods struggle in this regime-iterative algorithms are computationally heavy, convolutional networks blur fine structure, and sequence models are unstable when inputs are discontinuous or sparse. We present a generative diffusion framework tailored to recover ultrafast pulse intensity and phase from incomplete FROG measurements. Our model infers missing spectro-temporal content with high fidelity, enabling accurate retrieval from aggressively downsampled inputs. On a simulated benchmark of FROG-pulse pairs, the diffusion approach surpasses strong CNN and Seq2Seq baselines in accuracy and stability while remaining efficient enough for near real-time deployment.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2026

Optical superradiance from single-digit-femtosecond electron beam structure

We report measurements of superradiant optical transition radiation in the 550-800 nm range produced by ultrashort relativistic electron bunches at a dielectric boundary. In the measured optical spectra, we observe photon production with quadratic charge dependence in the visible range, consistent with optical frequency coherence determined by the longitudinal electron bunch form factor. The measured spectral envelope is reproduced by a theoretical model of coherent transition radiation (CTR), which is consistent with a sub-femtosecond longitudinal feature within the electron bunch with characteristic scale $τ_{\mathrm{FWHM}} = 1.2~\mathrm{fs}$. These results extend CTR from the terahertz into the visible spectrum without the use of undulators or externally seeded microbunching. This superradiant boundary emission in the optical range opens a route to tunable coherent radiation from charged particle beams and provides a platform for broadband coherent light generation, enabling new opportunities for phase-sensitive optical experiments.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2026

A spectral phase modulation transfer function for dispersive four-wave mixing

Indirect control of ultraviolet (UV) pulse phase through nonlinear frequency conversion is attractive when direct UV pulse shaping is limited by material loss, dispersion, and damage threshold. Here we cast dispersive four-wave mixing (DFWM) as a pump-conditioned spectral kernel and show that, in a locally one-to-one mapping regime, the signal-to-idler conversion admits a practical transfer function description. Starting from the exact frequency domain expression, we rewrite the idler field as a linear operator acting on the conjugated signal spectrum, with a two-frequency kernel set by the pump self-convolution and phase matching. Linearization around a reference operating point then yields a spectral phase-response kernel for small input perturbations. By probing this response with sinusoidal spectral-phase modulation of different spatial frequencies, we define a spectral phase-modulation transfer function (SPMTF), an MTF-like measure of the phase-transfer bandwidth of the nonlinear interaction. Simulations with different pump group-delay dispersion (GDD) values produce distinct SPMTF curves, showing that pump chirp directly controls how much fine spectral-phase structure survives the conversion. This framework provides a simple way to compare operating conditions and identify regimes favorable for programmable NIR-to-UV phase transfer.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2026

Programmable spectral phase transfer to the ultraviolet by gas-filled-fibre four-wave mixing

Programmable shaping of femtosecond ultraviolet (UV) pulses is still much less flexible than at visible and near-infrared wavelengths, mainly because direct UV modulators remain limited in bandwidth, throughput and damage threshold. Here we show that dispersive four-wave mixing (DFWM) in a gas-filled hollow-cappillary fibre (HCF) can transfer programmed spectral phase from the near infrared (NIR) to the UV without relying a narrowband pump. A shaped NIR signal at 1032 nm and a chirped 516-nm pump generate a 344-nm idler, which is characterized with transient-grating frequency-resolved optical gating (TG FROG). As a benchmark, second-order dispersion (SOD) applied to the signal is quantitatively reproduced in the idler. We then demonstrate the transfer of two nontrivial phase patterns: a localized nominal π-step and a moderate sinusoidal modulation. In the π-step case, a step imposed on the long-wavelength side of the signal appears on the short-wavelength side of the idler, consistent with the 2*pump - 1*signal mixing relation. In the sinusoidal case, the periodic phase produces a split temporal waveform in both signal and idler. These results show that gas-filled HCF DFWM can act as a practical spectral-phase transducer from the NIR to the UV, while also revealing a trade-off between conversion efficiency and phase-transfer fidelity.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2026

Advanced Control of Electron Beams: Tailoring X-ray Production with Programmable Laser Shaping

Leveraging the full scientific capabilities of next-generation high-repetition-rate free-electron lasers requires programmable control over electron-beam properties at their source. The photoinjector drive laser defines the electron beam's initial six-dimensional phase-space distribution, yet has historically been limited to Gaussian or static flat-top profiles, with most manipulation occurring downstream. Here we demonstrate software-programmable ultraviolet pulse shaping at the LCLS-II photoinjector as a source-level actuator that complements traditional accelerator controls. Using a coupled architecture combining dispersion-controlled nonlinear frequency conversion with spatial-light-modulator spectral shaping, we generate user-defined temporal structures and observe their imprint on electron bunches through high-resolution time-domain diagnostics. Laser-imposed multi-peaked modulation persists through acceleration, magnetic compression, and undulator transport with shot-to-shot repeatability, producing clearly resolved current structure in the compressed beam. Variance-based reconstruction from transverse deflecting cavity measurements reveals structured X-ray emission profiles exhibiting temporal features consistent with the programmed laser waveform. By providing rapid, software-controlled reconfiguration of electron-beam initial conditions, this source-level control approach establishes a programmable upstream actuator for future adaptive optimization and autonomous facility operation at high-repetition-rate light sources.

physics.acc-ph↗

arXiv2026

Physics-Guided Inverse Design of Optical Waveforms for Nonlinear Electromagnetic Dynamics

Structured optical waveforms are emerging as powerful control fields for the next generation of complex photonic and electromagnetic systems, where the temporal structure of light can determine the ultimate performance of scientific instruments. However, identifying optimal optical drive fields in strongly nonlinear regimes remains challenging because the mapping between optical inputs and system response is high-dimensional and typically accessible only through computationally expensive simulations. Here, we present a physics-guided deep learning framework for the inverse design of optical temporal waveforms. By training a light-weighted surrogate model on simulations, the method enables gradient-based synthesis of optical profiles that compensate nonlinear field distortions in driven particle-field systems. As a representative application, we apply the approach to the generation of electron beams used in advanced photon and particle sources. The learned optical waveform actively suppresses extrinsic emittance growth by more than 52% compared with conventional Gaussian operation and by approximately 9% relative to the theoretical flattop limit in simulation. We further demonstrate experimental feasibility by synthesizing the predicted waveform using a programmable pulse-shaping platform; incorporating the measured optical profile into beamline simulations yields a 31% reduction in the extrinsic emittance contribution. Beyond accelerator applications, this work establishes a general way for physics-guided inverse design of optical control fields, enabling structured light to approach fundamental performance limits in nonlinear photonic and high-frequency electromagnetic systems.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2026

Upstream Laser-based Longitudinal Enhancement of Relativistic Photoelectrons

Controlling the longitudinal phase space of high-brightness relativistic electron beams is crucial for advancing a broad spectrum of charged-particle-based instrumentation and scientific frontiers. A generalized method for achieving this control involves manipulating the photoemission laser's temporal distribution at the picosecond level, a long-standing technical challenge. Recent developments in laser shaping have enabled the creation of high-power, picosecond-scale symmetrical and asymmetrical temporal profiles, capable of fine-tuning complex space-charge dynamics and external field effects in relativistic charged-particle beams. Here, we demonstrate that rather than deviations from theorized, idealized laser distributions, a controlled asymmetry can be harnessed to counteract accelerator-induced distortions. By implementing spatiotemporal shaping of the ultraviolet photocathode laser at the LCLS-II superconducting injector, we achieve deterministic control over the longitudinal phase space without downstream corrections. We find that this optical asymmetry induces a self-linearizing effect across both low (40 pC) and high (80 pC) charge regimes, effectively suppressing nonlinear compression and energy chirp. Consequently, this approach is expected to preserve a low emittance comparable to that of ideal flattop or regular Gaussian profiles, while delivering superior current uniformity and shot-to-shot stability. These results establish spatiotemporal laser shaping as a compact, generalizable tool for directly optimizing beam brightness at the source.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2025

Structured Light at the Extreme: Harnessing Spatiotemporal Control for High-Field Laser-Matter Interactions

This review charts the emerging paradigm of intelligent structured light for high-field laser-matter interactions, where the precise spatiotemporal and vectorial control of light is a critical degree of freedom. We outline a transformative framework built upon three synergistic pillars. First, we survey the advanced electromagnetic toolkit, moving beyond conventional spatial light modulators to include robust static optics and the promising frontier of plasma light modulators. Second, we detail the optimization engine for this high-dimensional design space, focusing on physics-informed digital twins and AI-driven inverse design to automate the discovery of optimal light structures. Finally, we explore the groundbreaking applications enabled by this integrated approach, including programmable electron beams, orbital-angular-momentum-carrying γ-rays, compact THz accelerators, and robust communications. The path forward necessitates overcoming grand challenges in material science, real-time adaptive control at MHz rates, and the extension of these principles to the quantum realm. This review serves as a call to action for a coordinated, interdisciplinary effort to command, rather than merely observe, light-matter interactions at the extreme.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2025

Universal Quantum Interconnects via Phase-Coherent Four-Wave Mixing

Quantum transduction, which enables the coherent conversion of quantum information between disparate physical platforms, is a cornerstone for realizing scalable and interoperable quantum networks. Among various approaches, parametric frequency mixing processes such as four-wave mixing (FWM) offer a promising pathway toward efficient and low-noise transduction. In this work, we demonstrate the feasibility of coherent quantum state transfer by indirectly verifying high-fidelity wavefunction's phase mapping (>99%) from the input field to the generated output field wave. Using a gas-filled hollow-core capillary fiber, we systematically investigate spectral phase evolution across a broad range, including infrared (IR) to ultraviolet (UV) transitions, as well as conversions from telecom-band (1550 nm) to visible (516 nm) and deep-UV (308 nm) wavelengths. Our results reveal that strong phase coherence can be maintained throughout these diverse conversion regimes. Because quantum properties such as coherence and entanglement are intrinsically encoded in both the amplitude and phase of a photonic wavefunction, preserving spectral phase is essential for faithful quantum information transfer. We further show that efficient and phase-preserving transduction can be achieved by tuning system parameters, offering valuable insights into nonlinear coupling dynamics. These findings establish a promising foundation for advancing FWM-based quantum transduction schemes and open new avenues for integrating heterogeneous quantum systems across wide spectral domains within future quantum communication networks.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2025

Deep Learning Assisted Modeling for $χ^{(2)}$ Nonlinear Optics

Modeling second-order ($χ^{(2)}$) nonlinear optical processes remains computationally expensive due to the need to resolve fast field oscillations and simulate wave propagation using methods like the split-step Fourier method (SSFM). This can become a bottleneck in real-time applications, such as high-repetition-rate laser systems requiring rapid feedback and control. We present an LSTM-based surrogate model trained on SSFM simulations generated from a start-to-end model of the photocathode drive laser at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory's Linac Coherent Light Source II. The model achieves over 250x speedup while maintaining high fidelity, enabling future real-time optimization and laying the foundation for data-integrated modeling frameworks and digital twins of laser systems.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2025

Charged-particle control via spatio-temporally tailored pulses from gas-based nonlinear optics

Gas-filled waveguides enable few-cycle, spatio-temporally coupled (STC) pulses with programmable structure, opening new routes to control charged particles with optical fields. This review maps the landscape of optical-field-driven photoemission, then surveys gas-based nonlinear drivers, photonic crystal fibers (PCFs) for low-energy, high-repetition operation and hollow-core capillaries (HCCs) for high-power, few-cycle synthesis. We highlight mechanisms for deterministic pulse shaping, including four-wave-mixing-based spectral-phase transfer in HCCs, and show how tailored STC waveforms steer emission dynamics from the multiphoton to tunneling regimes, enabling sub-cycle gating, momentum control, and brightness scaling. We conclude with open challenges: phase stability, mid-IR scalability, coupling to nanophotonic emitters, metrology of vectorial fields, and outline a path toward compact, ultrafast, phase-coherent electron sources and emerging quantum applications powered by nonlinear photonics.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2025

Antisymmetric chirp transfer to high-energy ultraviolet pulses via gas-based chirped four-wave mixing

Spectro-temporal shaping of high-power femtosecond ultraviolet (UV) pulses remains a key challenge in ultrafast optics. Tailoring high-energy, ultrashort UV pulses underpins applications in ultrafast dynamics, high-precision spectroscopy, strong-field physics, charged-particle radiation sources, and industrial microfabrication. However, the transmission and damage threshold of the dielectric optics limit programmable shaping for high-power UV pulses. Towards overcoming this challenge, we demonstrate an antisymmetric dispersion transfer from near-infrared (NIR) pulses to UV pulses via chirped four-wave mixing (CFWM) in noble gas, whereby negatively chirped NIR pulses map quasi-linearly to positively chirped UV in a gas-filled hollow capillary fiber (HCF) at the expense of a moderate conversion efficiency of 13%. This antisymmetric chirp transfer approach broadens the basis for tailoring UV pulses by leveraging the high damage tolerance, large bandwidth acceptance, and intrinsically low dispersion of noble gases, rather than relying on conventional nonlinear crystals.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2025

Hybrid Deep Reconstruction for Vignetting-Free Upconversion Imaging through Scattering in ENZ Materials

Optical imaging through turbid or heterogeneous environments (collectively referred to as complex media) is fundamentally challenged by scattering, which scrambles structured spatial and phase information. To address this, we propose a hybrid-supervised deep learning framework to reconstruct high-fidelity images from nonlinear scattering measurements acquired with a time-gated epsilon-near-zero (ENZ) imaging system. The system leverages four-wave mixing (FWM) in subwavelength indium tin oxide (ITO) films to temporally isolate ballistic photons, thus rejecting multiply scattered light and enhancing contrast. To recover structured features from these signals, we introduce DeepTimeGate, a U-Net-based supervised model that performs initial reconstruction, followed by a Deep Image Prior (DIP) refinement stage using self-supervised learning. Our approach demonstrates strong performance across different imaging scenarios, including binary resolution patterns and complex vortex-phase masks, under varied scattering conditions. Compared to raw scattering inputs, it boosts average PSNR by 124%, SSIM by 231%, and achieves a 10 times improvement in intersection-over-union (IoU). Beyond enhancing fidelity, our method removes the vignetting effect and expands the effective field-of-view compared to the ENZ-based optical time gate output. These results suggest broad applicability in biomedical imaging, in-solution diagnostics, and other scenarios where conventional optical imaging fails due to scattering.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2025

Nonlinear Shaping in the Picosecond Gap

Lightwave pulse shaping in the picosecond regime has remained unaddressed because it resides beyond the limits of state-of-the-art techniques, either due to its inherently narrow spectral content or fundamental speed limitations in electronic devices. The so-called picosecond shaping gap hampers progress in all areas correlated with time-modulated light-matter interactions, such as photoelectronics, health and medical technologies, and energy and material sciences. We report on a novel nonlinear method to simultaneously frequency-convert and adaptably shape the envelope of light wavepackets in the picosecond regime by balancing spectral engineering and nonlinear conversion in solid-state nonlinear media, without requiring active devices. We capture computationally the versatility of this methodology across a diverse set of nonlinear conversion chains and initial conditions. We also provide experimental evidence of this framework producing picosecond-shaped, ultra-narrowband, near-transform limited light pulses from broadband, femtosecond input pulses, paving the way toward programmable lightwave shaping at GHz-to-THz frequencies.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2024

Time-correlation Transduction in Strong-field Quantum Electrodynamics

Recent developments in high-power ultrafast optical technology and emerging theoretical frameworks in strong-field quantum electrodynamics (SF-QED) are unveiling nuanced differentiations between the semi-classical and full quantum mechanical descriptions of physical systems. Here we present a computational investigation of a novel technique for attosecond optical sensing through time correlation transduction (TCT) by investigating high-harmonic generation (HHG) as a representative SF-QED process. TCT is an experimental method to capture photon-electron interactions at higher harmonic orders by temporarily correlating the emitted and driving photon fields. This approach enables resolving the dynamical behavior of optically-driven strong-field phenomena in quantum materials such as Two-dimensional Materials and Dirac Semimetals down to 10 attosecond temporal resolution to discover a full quantum explanation. Predicting and measuring the transition between perturbative and non-perturbative regimes with attosecond resolution can deepen the understanding of SF-QED such as HHG. As such, we find that TCT is a powerful method to pave the way toward the functional characterization of quantum matter.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2024

The LCLS-II Photoinjector Laser Infrastructure

This paper presents a comprehensive technical overview of the Linac Coherent Light Source II (LCLS-II) photoinjector laser system, its first and foremost component. The LCLS-II photoinjector laser system serves as an upgrade to the original LCLS at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. This advanced laser system generates high-quality laser beams for LCLS-II, contributing to the instrument's unprecedented brightness, precision, and flexibility. Our discussion extends to the various subsystems that comprise the photoinjector, including the photocathode laser, laser heater, and beam transport systems. Lastly, we draw attention to the ongoing research and development infrastructure underway to enhance the functionality and efficiency of the LCLS-II, and similar X-ray free-electron laser facilities around the world, thereby contributing to the future of laser technology and its applications.

physics.acc-ph↗

arXiv2024

Optimizing Spectral Phase Transfer in Four-Wave Mixing with Gas-filled Capillaries: A Trade-off Study

Four-wave mixing (FWM) in gas-filled hollow-core capillaries, a nonlinear optical process that mixes signal and pump photon frequencies to generate idler frequency photons, offers a method for precise spectral phase transfer from signal to idler at ultrashort timescales and extreme powers. However, this regime is challenged by competing linear and nonlinear dynamics, leading to significant trade-offs between spectral phase transfer and conversion efficiency. Our computational investigation focuses on upconversion of femtosecond pulses from the infrared (IR) to the ultraviolet (UV), a range notoriously difficult to manipulate. We explore an intermediate energy regime that strikes an optimal balance between FWM-mediated phase-transfer fidelity and nonlinear conversion efficiency. By adjusting the energy ratios and spectral phase profiles of the input signal, we achieve conversion efficiencies of approximately 5%-15% while maintaining an effectively quasi-linear spectral phase transfer. These findings contribute to establishing first-principles and scaling laws essential for applications such as high-precision imaging, spectroscopy, quantum transduction, and distributed entangled interconnects, facilitating advanced control of ultrafast photonic and electronic wavepackets in quantum materials with unprecedented spatial and temporal precision.

physics.optics↗