Howard Carmichael

Howard Carmichael (Manchester, 1950) is a quantum optics physicist who made major contributions to the field throughout several decades, since the mid-70s when, still a graduate student (with Daniel Walls), he provided a seminal theory of antibunching.[1][2] As one of the most productive, creative and technically able theorist in the field, he is no short of a hero of quantum optics.

He seems to have touched everything that is fundamental at some point or the other, given his interest on photon correlations, photon statistics, cavity QED, resonance fluorescence and multiphoton physics in general. We often find him lurking in the results that we ourselves pursue.[3][4]

Some of his results, like the insightful cascading formalism[5] (which he christens), have an unclear history or epistemological purposes, as they have been derived simultaneously by other people[6] (see also the quantum Monte Carlo approach[7] vs [8][9]).

We suspect him, as an editor of NJP whom we had nominated, to reject our paper on frequency-resolved Monte Carlo[10] (i.e., not sending to referees) on the account that everything had already been done by... Carmichael (both the Monte Carlo technique itself, as well as the cascading mechanism that we use in this paper, were indeed previously obtained by him but their combination to frequency-resolve the emission was not, so we remain to this day in shock of this shortsightedness).

He wrote excellent textbooks, and remains active to this day. Although born in England, he was raised, educated and lives in New Zealand (MSc from the University of Auckland in 1973 and D. Phil degree from the University of Waikato in 1977). He did his Post. Doc in the USA in the period 19771981 in New-York and Austin.

Links

References

  1. A quantum-mechanical master equation treatment of the dynamical Stark effect. H. J. Carmichael and D. F. Walls in J. Phys. B.: At. Mol. Phys. 9:1199 (1976).
  2. Proposal for the measurement of the resonant Stark effect by photon correlation techniques. H. J. Carmichael and D. F. Walls in J. Phys. B.: At. Mol. Phys. 9:L43 (1976).
  3. Photon Antibunching and Squeezing for a Single Atom in a Resonant Cavity. H. J. Carmichael in Phys. Rev. Lett. 55:2790 (1985).
  4. Quantum interference and collapse of the wavefunction in cavity QED. H. J. Carmichael, R. J. Brecha and P. R. Rice in Opt. Commun. 82:73 (1991).
  5. An open systems approach to Quantum Optics. H. Carmichael in An open systems approach to Quantum Optics (Photoelectric Detection II) 6:110 (1993).
  6. Driving a quantum system with the output field from another driven quantum system. C. W. Gardiner in Phys. Rev. Lett. 70:2269 (1993).
  7. Quantum trajectory theory for cascaded open systems. H. J. Carmichael in Phys. Rev. Lett. 70:2273 (1993).
  8. Wave-function approach to dissipative processes in quantum optics. J. Dalibard, Y. Castin and K. Molmer in Phys. Rev. Lett. 68:580 (1992).
  9. Monte Carlo simulation of the atomic master equation for spontaneous emission. R. Dum, P. Zoller and H. Ritsch in Phys. Rev. A 45:4879 (1992).
  10. Frequency-resolved Monte Carlo. J. C. López Carreño, E. del Valle and F. P. Laussy in Sci. Rep. 8:6975 (2018). Pdf-48px.png