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Quantum Optics
If a scientific discipline should be reduced to one concept only, quantum optics could be defined as the science of photons correlations.
In the words of one of its founding fathers—Roy Glauber—Maxwell's theory of Electromagnetism was so perfect that the light field has long eluded a proper quantum treatment:
That overwhelming and continuing success may eventually have led to a certain complacency. It seemed to imply that the field of optics, by the middle of the 20th century, scarcely needed to take any notice of the granular nature of light. Studying the behavior of light quanta was then left to the atomic and elementary particle physicists—whose interests were largely directed toward other phenomena.
This is despite the fact, as Glauber observes, that «The story of the quantum theory, of course, really begins with Max Planck» and his treatment of blackbody radiation, which is an optical effect!
The first experimental evidence of non-classical light is from Burnham and Weinberg.[1]
Key Concepts and Problems
- photons correlations (as measured by, e.g., $g^{(2)}$) including frequency-resolved photon correlations.
- Quantum optical coherence.
- Single-Photon Sources (or SPS), in particular Antibunching.
- Resonance fluorescence, Parametric fluorescence, etc.
- Single-molecule spectroscopy.
People
(in no particular order)
- Leonard Mandel
- Roy Glauber
- Benjamin Mollow
- Serge Reynaud
- Crispin Gardiner
- Daniel Walls
- David Stoler
- Zhe-Yu Ou
- Malvin Carl Teich & Bahaa E. A. Saleh
- Howard Carmichael
- Gerard Milburn
- Klaus Mølmer
- Vahid Sandoghdar with molecules (and biology).
- Juha Javanainen from atomic BEC.
- David Pegg on the quantum phase.
Citations
Historically, the field of quantum optics has been strongly rooted in the growing awareness starting around 1960 of the consequences in photodetection experiments of the difference between means of operator products and products of operator means