Resonance Energy Transfer in Arbitrary Media: Two Entangled Photons*

We report the resonance energy transfer between two uncoupled two-level atoms jointly excited by temporally entangled field.
The virtual photons arising from three-level cascade decay are inherently ordered in time of emission. Since the induced joint resonance in two-atom excitation probability comes from the field correlation and the suppression of one of the time-ordered excitation pathways, we see the rate in two-photon energy transfer increases with the time-frequency entanglement. This is justifying the enhancement of energy transfer through the entangled two-photon by a large factor as compared to uncorrelated photons. Based on the new formulation derived here and due to the permanent entangled field interacting with the system over the time scale of energy transfer, the rate depends on the emitter’s properties dominantly. The situation would be more complicated if the process mediated by inhomogeneous, dispersive media.