Higher-Energy X-Rays Could Enable a New Form of Quantum Sensing

Insider Brief

• Researchers used entangled electrons in helium atoms to produce higher-energy X-rays beyond the limit predicted by standard theory, potentially opening a new approach to quantum sensing.

• Two correlated electrons returned to the same ion simultaneously and released their combined energy as a single X-ray photon, an effect observed for the first time.

• The method could help detect paired-electron correlations in gases and materials, with possible applications in quantum computing and advanced nanomaterials.

• Artist’s rendering of an ultraviolet laser pulse (dark blue waves in foreground) acting on a helium atom (center). Two electrons are pulled away and driven back (pale blue spiral waves trace their return). When they recombine, they emit light at extreme ultraviolet frequencies (violet waves) and X-rays (white). (Tenio Pompmintchev lab / UC San Diego)

PRESS RELEASE — When certain atoms are irradiated with laser light, they can produce laser pulses with extremely high frequencies in the X-ray range. Until now, the theoretical model of this effect predicted an upper limit to the energy, known as the energy cutoff. Past this point, hardly any X-rays are produced.

New research from the University of California San Diego, TU Wien (Austria) and the University of Salamanca (Spain) succeeds in overcoming this cutoff. Using helium atoms, the researchers reached a much higher energy range than standard theory predicts, because the atom’s two electrons can release their energy together as a single X-ray photon.

For this experiment, UC San Diego Assistant Professor of Physics Tenio Popmintchev’s team used intense UV lasers and helium atoms. The first electron is released and accelerated, followed by the second. The two electrons are not independent of one another, but are quantum-mechanically correlated and entangled from the moment they are freed until the moment they return.

Using UV driving pulses, the team could arrange for both electrons to recombine with the same ion at exactly the same instant, releasing their combined energy as one higher-energy X-ray photon. This double-electron recombination is the reverse of a process in which a single photon ejects two electrons at once — something that can happen only because the electrons are correlated. Here it has been observed for the first time.

Secondary plateaus have also been reported through a similar process in quantum materials, raising the open and testable question of whether these features constitute a unique fingerprint of strongly correlated dynamics — and thus an all-optical quantum sensor of paired-electron correlations not only in gases but also in condensed matter — reading them out with ultrafast precision.

The answer matters for quantum computing, where correlation and entanglement between electrons are the resources being engineered, and for the design of advanced nanomaterials, whose properties are governed by the same interactions.

“For the first time, we can see two entangled electrons return to the same ion at the same instant and give up their energy as a single X-ray photon. That gives us an X-ray fingerprint of electron correlation — the physics underlying both quantum computing and, potentially, the design of advanced nanomaterials,” said Popmintchev.

The study was published August 7, 2026 in Nature Photonics. UC San Diego authors are Siyang Wang, Jieyu Yan, Sirius Song, Aleksander Prodanov, Zhihan Wu and Tenio Popmintchev. Their research was funded, in part, by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (FG-2018-10892) and the European Research Council (XSTREAM-716950).

Read the study in Nature Photonics: “ Correlated electrons extend X-ray high-harmonic generation beyond the single-electron limit. ”