Frontiers Of Quantum Optics And Laser Physics

The International Conference on Quantum Optics and Laser Physics was held at the Hong Kong Baptist University from January 3 to January 6, 1997, to discuss exciting developments in quantum optics. The international character of the conference was manifested by the fact that scientists from over 15 countries participated and lectured at the conference. There were two plenary lectures delivered by Nobel laureates Willis Lamb, Jr. and Chin-Ning Yang. In addition, there were 21 invited lectures, 35 contributed oral papers, and 34 poster presentations. This volume contains many of the papers presented at the conference.

Since the advent of the laser about 40 years ago, the fields of laser physics and quantum optics have evolved into a major disciplines. The early studies included optical coherence theory and semiclassical and quantum mechanical theories of the laser. More recently many new and interesting effects have been predicted. These include the role of coherent atomic effects in lasing without inversion and electromagnetically induced transparency, atom optics, laser cooling and trapping, teleportation, the single-atom micromaser and its role in quantum measurement theory, to name a few. The International Conference on Laser Physics and Quantum Optics was held in Shanghai, China, from August 25 to August 28,1999, to discuss these and many other exciting developments in laser physics and quantum optics. The international character of the conference was manifested by the fact that scientists from over 13 countries participated and lectured at the conference. There were four keynote lectures delivered by Nobel laureate Willis Lamb, Jr., Profs. H. Walther, A.E. Siegman,and M.O. Scully. In addition, there were 34 invited lectures, 27 contributed oral presentations, and 59 poster papers. We are grateful to all the participants of the conference and the contributors of this volume.

The field of quantum optics has progressed rapidly in the last twenty five years with the advent of the laser. Over much of this period the phenomena studied could be described adequately by semiclassical treatments. Quite recently however, there has been a revival of interest in genuinely quantum mechanical effects. The Malvern Symposium of December 1985 brought together world experts for a meeting which concentrated largely on these quantum effects. The presentations in this unique meeting combine review material with the very latest results and so will be of value to students of quantum optics and measurement theory at all levels. The first articles cover the exciting topic of the generation of squeezed states of light in the laboratory, and their possible uses. Experimental success has been long sought and very recently attained. The reader will find presented the state of the art in this field. Next to lasing itself, optical bistability has been the most widely studied phenomenon in quantum optics, largely for its technological promise. However, it also provides a fundamental system to study quuantum effects. Recent theoretical studies of optical bistability with small numbers of atoms are surveyed. In such situations quantum features such as antibunching become significant, and the articles in this volume should be a guide to those venturing into this challenging area. In other articles discussions of fluctuations from other noise sources and instabilities in optical bistabilty are presented in a clear and interesting way. Perhaps the least classical state on quantum optics is that describing a single photon. Recent experiments which produce such states are reviewed. A theoretical review of the photon together with some new material is given which delves deeply into relativistic quantum field theory in order to describe the concept of weakly localised photon states. The material here is very rarely presented in the context of quantum optics. The history of the theory of the quantum fluctuations in a laser is then reviewed. An off-shoot of this theory is the study of quantum chaos in dissipative systems and recent results in this new area are given in a succeeding article. There are further stimulating articles on Rydberg atom systems and quantum electrodynamics. The volume ends with an entertaining and incisive study of quantum measurement problems, such as the Schrodinger cat papadox, using concepts and measuring devices found in quantum optics. other_titles

This book provides a cutting-edge research overview on the latest developments in the field of Optics and Photonics. All chapters are authored by the pioneers in their field and will cover the developments in Quantum Photonics, Optical properties of 2D Materials, Optical Sensors, Organic Opto-electronics, Nanophotonics, Metamaterials, Plasmonics, Quantum Cascade lasers, LEDs, Biophotonics and biomedical photonics and spectroscopy.

This book grew out of a 2-semester graduate course in laser physics and quantum optics. It requires a solid understanding of elementary electro magnetism as well as at least one, but preferably two, semesters of quantum mechanics. Its present form resulted from many years of teaching and research at the University of Arizona, the Max-Planck-Institut fiir Quanten optik, and the University of Munich. The contents have evolved signifi cantly over the years, due to the fact that quantum optics is a rapidly chang ing field. Because the amount of material that can be covered in two semes ters is finite, a number of topics had to be left out or shortened when new material was added. Important omissions include the manipulation of atomic trajectories by light, superradiance, and descriptions of experiments. Rather than treating any given topic in great depth, this book aims to give a broad coverage of the basic elements that we consider necessary to carry out research in quantum optics. We have attempted to present a vari ety of theoretical tools, so that after completion of the course students should be able to understand specialized research literature and to produce original research of their own. In doing so, we have always sacrificed rigor to physical insight and have used the concept of "simplest nontrivial exam ple" to illustrate techniques or results that can be generalized to more com plicated situations.

Published on the occasion of Theodor Hänsch's 60th Birthday emphasis is placed on precision related to results in a variety of fields, such as atomic clocks, frequency standards, and the measurement of physical constants in atomic physics. Furthermore, illustrations and engineering applications of the fundamentals of quantum mechanics are widely covered. It has contributions by Nobel prize winners Norman F. Ramsey, Steven Chu, and Carl E. Wieman.

This new edition gives a unique and broad coverage of basic laser-related phenomena that allow graduate students, scientists and engineers to carry out research in quantum optics and laser physics. It covers quantization of the electromagnetic field, quantum theory of coherence, atom-field interaction models, resonance fluorescence, quantum theory of damping, laser theory using both the master equation and the Langevin theory, the correlated emission laser, input-output theory with applications to non-linear optics, quantum trajectories, quantum non-demolition measurements and generation of non-classical vibrational states of ions in a Paul trap. In this third edition, there is an enlarged chapter on trapped ions, as well as new sections on quantum computing and quantum bits with applications. There is also additional material included for quantum processing and entanglement. These topics are presented in a unified and didactic manner, each chapter is accompanied by specific problems and hints to solutions to deepen the knowledge.

Being the most active field in modern physics, Optical Physics has developed many new branches and interdisciplinary fields overlapping with various classical disciplines. This series summarizes the advancements of optical physics in the past twenty years in the following fields: High Field Laser Physics, Precision Laser Spectroscopy, Nonlinear Optics, Nanophotonics, Quantum Optics, Ultrafast Optics, Condensed Matter Optics, and Molecular Biophotonics.