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Theoretical Background

In this Chapter we introduce the formalism that we will use in the rest of the text: the quantum harmonic oscillator, the two-level system, strong coupling, decoherence, spectra of emission and other central concepts are defined.

More details of the content can be found in various textbooks, such as those of Gerry & Knight (2005) and Haroche & Raimond (2006) for basic quantum optics and light-matter interaction, or Mandel & Wolf (1995) and Scully & Zubairy (2002) at a more advanced level. Carmichael (2002), Gardiner (1991) and Schlosshauer & Schlosshauer-Selbach (2007) are more focused on noise and decoherence; Yamamoto & Imamoglu (1999) and Kavokin et al. (2007) address specifically the semiconductor systems.

• The harmonic oscillator: bosonic states
• The two level system: fermionic states
• Coherent coupling
• Incoherent processes: master equation and Lindblad terms
• First order coherence function and the power spectrum
  • Basic examples
  • The manifold approach
  
  
• The Quantum Regression Formula
• Second order correlation function and the noise spectrum