Physics 250 Quantum Optics

Instructor: Dirk Bouwmeester

• Office: 4123 Broida Hall
• Phone: x8358
• Email:

TA: Dustin Kleckner

• Office: 3406 Broida Hall
• Office Hours in PSR: Tuesday, 11:30-1:00 (but you can come by my office any time)
• Phone: x5456
• Email:

Lectures: MW 2:00-3:15 in HSSB 1210

Primary textbook: Introductory Quantum Optics by Gerry and Knight

Unfortunately, this textbook has some typos. You can find a list of corrections here.

Another useful textbook is Quantum Optics by Walls and Millburn. If you are on the campus network, this textbook can be downloaded for free using the above link!

Lecture notes from Dustin's Lecture
Lecture notes from Dirk's Lecture on Nov. 25th

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Problem Sets

• Problem Set 1, due Wed. Oct. 7th (Solution to Problem 4)
• Problem Set 2, due Wed. Oct. 14th (Solution to Problems 2 and 4)
• Problem Set 3, due Thurs. Oct. 22nd (Solutions)
• Problem Set 4, due Thurs. Oct. 29nd (Solutions)
• Problem Set 5, due Thurs. Nov. 5th (Solutions)
• Problem Set 6, due Tues. Nov. 17th (Solutions; Note: on the last problem I did more work than I needed to. The book wanted you to set the on-diagonal elements of the Hamiltonian equal to 0. This is functionally equivalent to setting Delta = 0 for my solution.)
• Problem Set 7, due Tues. Dec. 1st

Final, Due Tuesday Dec. 8th at 5 PM

• Reference 1
• Reference 2
• Reference 3
• Reference 5
• Reference 6

Solutions to Final Problems 1-4

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Course Outline

Fundamental concepts:

• Gauge theory approach to derive Maxwell's equations
• General relativistic formulation of Maxwell's equations (and derivation of knots of light)
• Planck distribution and the notion of photons
• Why photons are spin 1 particles
• Vacuum fluctuations, Casimir force, and Lamb shift

Photons:

• Correlation functions
• Anti-bunching
• Coherent states, squeezed states, photon number states
• Entangled photons

Laser physics:

• Stimulated emission of photons
• Fokker-Planck equation

Atomic optics:

• Cavity quantum electrodynamics with trapped atom
• Optical cooling of atoms
• Entangling atoms and photons
• Self-induced transparency
• Superradiance
• Bose Einstein condensates

Solid-state quantum optics:

• Optical properties of semiconductor quantum dots and diamond defect centers
• Solid-state cavity quantum electrodynamics

Optomechanical systems:

• Quantum limited optical cooling of mechanical resonators
• Scaling from gravitational wave detectors mirrors to nanorods

Quantum Information Science with Photons:

• Tests of Bell's inequalities
• Production of Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states
• Quantum teleportation
• Quantum repeaters
• Quantum cryptography

Quantum metrology with photons:

• Interaction free measurements
• Ghost imaging
• NOON state interferometer

Reservoir theory and damping:

• Master equation approach