Practical Method for Achieving Single-Photon Femtosecond Time-Resolved Spectroscopy: Transient Stimulated Emission

Recent advances in single-photon femtosecond spectroscopy have highlighted the power of entangled photons in probing the properties of materials, previously inaccessible through semiclassical spectroscopic approaches. In this study, we theoretically propose a new single-photon-based femtosecond time-resolved spectroscopy technique termed single-photon transient stimulated emission (SP-TSE). SP-TSE not only enables the selective investigation of singly excited superposition states but also harnesses the quantum mechanical nature of photons for the efficient data acquisition of transient responses, thereby supporting the feasibility of experimental realization of SP-TSE. The key aspect of SP-TSE is the selective detection of two-photon states produced through stimulated emission using coincidence counting techniques. Our theoretical framework, supported by numerical simulations, demonstrates the efficacy in capturing the pure decoherence dynamics of a model molecular cavity, highlighting its potential to reveal quantum mechanical properties that are difficult to observe with semiclassical femtosecond time-resolved experiments.