Program and Textbooks

Program

Classical theory of coherence and statistical properties of radiation. Coherent and chaotic light. Semi-classical theory of photon detection. Characterization of light by photon statistics. Mach-Zehnder interferometer. Degree of first order coherence. Hanbury-Brown and Twiss interferometer. Degree of second order coherence. Experimental evidences of photon-antibunching. Quantum theory of the electromagnetic field. Quantization of single mode and multimode fields. Fock states. Coherent states. Squeezed states. Quantum mechanics of the beam splitter.  Quantum theory of the Hanbury-Brown and Twiss experiment. Single photon interference. Hong-Ou-Mandel interference. Time-resolved two-photon interference. Atom-field interaction. Fermi’s golden rule. Interaction Hamiltonian. Perturbation theory for a 2-level system. Rabi oscillations. Spontaneous emission. Line broadening. Einstein coefficients. Optical Bloch equations. Damping of the Rabi Oscillations. Semi-classical theory of laser. Laser behaviour in steady-state and transient regime. Fundamentals of non-linear optics.  Electromagnetic field in a non-linear medium, semi-classical approach. Full quantum treatment of light-matter interaction. Absorption and emission rates. The Jaynes-Cumming model. Quantized Rabi oscillations. Collapse and revival of Rabi oscillations. Cavity quantum electrodynamics: strong and weak coupling regimes. Weisskopf-Wigner theory of spontaneous emission. Weak coupling regimes: The Purcell effect. Source of single photons and photon pairs. Quantum treatment of parametric fluorescence. 

Suggested books

Loudon, The quantum theory of light, Oxford University Press; 

Gerry and Knight, Introductory quantum optics, Cambridge University Press;

Fox, Quantum optics, an introduction, Oxford University Press;

Grynberf, Aspect, Fabre, Introduction to quantum optics, Cambridge University Press;

Boyd, Nonlinear optics, Academic Press;