Noise correlations in time- and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy

Abstract

In time-resolved photoemission experiments, more than one electron can be emitted from the solid by a single ultra-short pulse. We theoretically demonstrate how correlations between the momenta of outgoing electrons relate to time-dependent two-particle correlations in the solid. This can extend the scope of time- and angular-resolved photoemission spectroscopy to probe superconducting and charge density fluctuations in systems without long-range order, and to reveal their dynamics independent of the electronic gap and thus unrestricted by the energy-time uncertainty. The proposal is illustrated for superconductivity in a BCS model. An impulsive perturbation can quench the gap on ultrafast timescales, while non-equilibrium pairing correlations persist much longer, even when electron-electron scattering beyond mean-field theory is taken into account. There is thus a clear distinction between a dephasing of the Cooper pairs and the thermalization into the normal state. While a measurement of the gap would be blind to such pairing correlations, they can be revealed by the angular correlations in photoemission.