Statistical Methods In Quantum Optics 2

This second volume of Howard Carmichael’s work continues the development of the methods used in quantum optics to treat open quantum systems and their fluctuations. Its early chapters build upon the phase-space methods introduced in Volume 1. Written on a level suitable for debut researchers or students in an advanced course in quantum optics, or a course in quantum mechanics or statistical physics that deals with open quantum systems.

This is the first of a two-volume presentation on current research problems in quantum optics, and will serve as a standard reference in the field for many years to come. The book provides an introduction to the methods of quantum statistical mechanics used in quantum optics and their application to the quantum theories of the single-mode laser and optical bistability. The generalized representations of Drummond and Gardiner are discussed together with the more standard methods for deriving Fokker-Planck equations.

This second volume of Howard Carmichael’s work continues the development of the methods used in quantum optics to treat open quantum systems and their fluctuations. Its early chapters build upon the phase-space methods introduced in Volume 1. Written on a level suitable for debut researchers or students in an advanced course in quantum optics, or a course in quantum mechanics or statistical physics that deals with open quantum systems.

This book offers a systematic and comprehensive exposition of the quantum stochastic methods that have been developed in the field of quantum optics. It includes new treatments of photodetection, quantum amplifier theory, non-Markovian quantum stochastic processes, quantum input--output theory, and positive P-representations. It is the first book in which quantum noise is described by a mathematically complete theory in a form that is also suited to practical applications. Special attention is paid to non-classical effects, such as squeezing and antibunching. Chapters added to the previous edition, on the stochastic Schrödinger equation, and on cascaded quantum systems, and now supplemented, in the third edition by a chapter on recent developments in various pertinent fields such as laser cooling, Bose-Einstein condensation, quantum feedback and quantum information.

The quantum statistical properties of radiation represent an important branch of modern physics with rapidly increasing applications in spectroscopy, quantum generators of radiation, optical communication, etc. They have also an increasing role in fields other than pure physics, such as biophysics, psychophysics, biology, etc. The present monograph represents an extension and continuation of the previous monograph of this author entitled Coherence of Light (Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, London 1972, translated into Russian in the Publishing House Mir, Moscow 1974) and of a review chapter in Progress in Optics, Vol. 18 (E. Wolf (Ed.), North-Holland Publishing Company, Amsterdam 1980), published just recently. It applies the fundamental tools of the coherent-state technique, as described in Coherence of Light, to particular studies of the quantum statistical properties of radiation in its interaction with matter. In particular, nonlinear optical processes are considered, and purely quantum phenomena such as antibunching of photons are discussed. This book will be useful to research workers in the fields of quantum optics and electronics, quantum generators, optical communication and solid-state physics, as well as to students of physics, optical engineering and opto-electronics.