Bruce W. Shore
The quantum world within an atom or molecule that once attracted explorations only by academic physicists now provides fertile sustenance for chemists seeking control of chemical reactions and for engineers developing ever smaller electronic devices or tools for processing information with greater security. Whereas the first pioneers could only discover the most elementary properties – the discrete energy levels that characterize the internal structures of atoms and the radiative transitions that link these structures to our external world – it is now possible to alter that structure at will, albeit briefly. Objective This monograph presents the physical principles that describe such deliberately crafted changes, namely how single atoms or molecules (or other simple quantum systems) are affected by coherent interactions, primarily laser light – a subject that has been regarded first as a part of quantum electronics and then quantum optics but is most generally described as coherent atomic excitation [Sho90]. This physics has relevance to such basic concerns as the detection and quantitative analysis of trace amounts of chemicals, the catalysis or control of chemical reactions, the alignment of molecules, and the processing of quantum information. The physics necessarily involves elementary quantum mechanics, but it has many associations to the classical dynamics that governs macroscopic objects – waves and particles. The mathematics that quantifies the changes is that of differential equations, specifically coupled ordinary differential equations (ODEs), whose parameters incorporate the controls of experimenters and whose solutions, appropriately interpreted, quantify the resulting changes.
Cambridge University Press eBooks•Sep 29, 2011•6 citations