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Physics and applications: Quantum optics

Azeddine Messikh, Youssouf Hamidou Issoufa

Published Jan 1, 2012• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

Quantum optics was born in the first years of the 20th century. The first papers leading to further ideas of quanta of light were presented by Max Planck and Albert Einstein. Their pioneering papers laid the foundations for the theory of quantum optics. However, one should remember that for the birth of the formal theory of quantisation of light, the development of quantum mechanics was necessary. Interestingly, the word ’photon’ appeared for the first time in a paper by a Gilbert Lewis, a chemist, in 1926 and was later used by P.A.M. Dirac, a physicist, the next year. The modern sense of the term quantum optics was established in 1956 when Hanbury Brown and Twiss built the intensity interferometr and performed their famous experiment in which correlations between two light beams were measured. Although the results of their experiment could be explained on the basis of the classical theory of light, with some quantumcomponent to the process of photodetection, their result is commonly accepted as the beginning of the modern quantum optics era. The next milestone in the development of quantum optics was the invention of laser in 1960. The physical properties of the light generated by lasers were considerably different from those characterising the light generated by classical thermal sources. This fact was a great impulse leading to further development of quantum optics’ ideas. The first of them were presented in the fundamental papers written by Glauber, describing new states of light quantum coherent states.

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Quantum optics was born in the first years of the 20th century. The first papers leading to further ideas of quanta of light were presented by Max Planck and Albert Einstein. Their pioneering papers laid the foundations for the theory of quantum optics. However, one should remember that for the birth of the formal theory of quantisation of light, the development of quantum mechanics was necessary. Interestingly, the word ’photon’ appeared for the first time in a paper by a Gilbert Lewis, a chemist, in 1926 and was later used by P.A.M. Dirac, a physicist, the next year. The modern sense of the term quantum optics was established in 1956 when Hanbury Brown and Twiss built the intensity interferometr and performed their famous experiment in which correlations between two light beams were measured. Although the results of their experiment could be explained on the basis of the classical theory of light, with some quantumcomponent to the process of photodetection, their result is commonly accepted as the beginning of the modern quantum optics era. The next milestone in the development of quantum optics was the invention of laser in 1960. The physical properties of the light generated by lasers were considerably different from those characterising the light generated by classical thermal sources. This fact was a great impulse leading to further development of quantum optics’ ideas. The first of them were presented in the fundamental papers written by Glauber, describing new states of light quantum coherent states.
The beginning of the 20th century is marked by tremendous new scientific developments and specifically by the birth of quantum mechanics. It starts with Max Planck and Max Einstein, who introduce and apply the concept of quanta to characterize the energy of light. Quantum computers can considerably decrease the time it takes to complete calculations and solve extremely complex problems. Until the 18th century, very little is understood about light. According to the philosophers Euclid and Plato, light is produced by our eyes. Light is clearly capable of traveling through an interstellar void, while a wave needs a medium for material propagation to exist. However, because of Isaac Newton’s reputation, the corpuscular theory persists until the 19th century. When light is beamed on the top layer, it frees and pushes an electron that moves towards the bottom layer, creating a current. This current is then used to power engines for electric cars.
This chapter presents the basic physical ideas that underpin the quantum theory. Historians place the beginnings of the quantum theory at 1900. That year Max Planck published his famous formula for the distribution of energy as a function of frequency in black-body radiation. Curiously, although radiation theory gave birth to quantum mechanics, the interaction of matter and electromagnetic radiation is a rather advanced topic in quantum mechanics and it took almost fifty years for an acceptable formulation to be achieved. One reason for this is that photons are quanta of the electromagnetic field, and the quantum theory of fields requires a relativistic treatment to be entirely successful. The corpuscular nature of light was only half of the input that gave birth to quantum mechanics. The other half concerns matter. Given that the discreteness of photons manifests itself during the emission and absorption process, it is not surprising to find that quantum oddities afflict the behaviour of material particles too.
Our ability to manipulate the coherence properties of light has been at the heart of many of the most important scientific and technological innovations of this century. There can hardly be a home in this country that does not possess a laser in the form of a compact disc player or a CDROM. When we talk on the phone, or send messages on the Internet, there is a high probability that our message will be encoded by a laser into pulses of light to be passed through optical fibres. In the last few years physicists have been discovering that it is possible to control the coherence properties of atoms, and are now developing tools analogous to those which have been developed to take advantage of the coherence properties of light. In the next decade we can look forward to seeing the application of lasers, fibres, mirrors and waveguides for atoms. Already we have been able to construct interferometry experiments using beams of atoms and these have proved to be extremely sensitive measurement devices, allowing us to test physical theories and measure fundamental constants to a level of precision not previously possible. Will these developing technologies ever be as ubiquitous as their optical forebears? In this paper we discuss the anticipated uses of this technology for both fundamental science and industrial applications. Starting from an explanation of the meaning of coherence and a comparison of the properties of photons and atoms, we describe the development of the science of atom optics. The tortuous route towards the great achievement of producing a Bose–Einstein condensate is described, and we explain why this is the most important step towards a laser–like source of atoms. Numerous other optical elements for atoms have been built or are on the drawing board, and we describe how these may be used to manipulate atoms with a precision that has never before been achieved, and look ahead to what we can learn about physics using these tools and at how they can be put to practical use.
Newtonian mechanics is the foundation of Classical Physics. Newton’s mechanics, Thermodynamics, Wave theory of Optics and Maxwell’s electromagnetic theory belong to regime of Classical Physics and can be used to explain a wide range of phenomena in the Universe at macroscopic scale. These theories fail spectacularly when applied to phenomenain the atomic and nuclear regime, for example, proton-atom scattering or the flow of electrons in a semiconductor. Quantum mechanics is the most successful scientific theory that has ever been created and it has completely changed our view of the world. The failure of Classical Physics was highlighted by black body radiation and photoelectric effect. Max Planck and Albert Einstein provided explanations of both phenomena based on quantum hypothesis and are thus considered founders of Quantum Physics. The origin of quantum mechanics goes back to the mid-1920s.It was formulated first as matrix mechanics by Werner Heisenberg, Max Born and Pascual Jordan; then as wave mechanics by Louis de Broglie and Erwin Schrödinger; and later on asquantum statistics of subatomic particles by Fermi-Dirac and Bose-Einstein. Combining relativistic mechanics with quantum mechanics, Dirac formulated his relativistic quantum mechanics during 1930s. Uncertainty Principle is thecornerstone of Quantum Physics. The role of randomness in microscopic physical processes shatters the myth that the universe is deterministic. Quantum world is unpredictable in the classical sense and demolishes the idea of an objective universe. The Copenhagen interpretation remains the quantum mechanical formalism that is currently most widely accepted amongst physicists.Quantum theories support cosmic spirit pervading the cosmos and inter – relationship of individuals in the world society. Quantum philosophy is holistic and is going to revolutionize our world-view.
Although many of the solitons described in previous chapters were discovered and studied in the 20th century, they could have been discovered and understood by physicists of the previous century. What I have in mind, of course, is the distinction between classical (19th century) and quantum physics (20th century). It happened that the quantum revolution in physics started at the frontier of the two centuries. At the end of 1900 the German physicist Max Planck (1858–1947) boldly introduced the notion of quanta of energy in the processes of emission of light by atoms. He also introduced a new fundamental constant in physics, the Planck constant h . The significance of this revolutionary step was not recognized until much later. Planck himself did not realize that he had started one of the greatest revolutions in physics. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
Toward the end of the nineteenth century, it became clear that some experiments cannot be explained on the basis of known physics, now referred to as classical physics. In 1900, Max Planck was able to correctly describe the distribution of blackbody radiation energy as a function of wavelength λ or frequency ν = c/λ. He had to accept the existence of energy packets (quanta) with energy E = hν. A few years later, Albert Einstein found that this unexpected relation between energy and frequency is also necessary in order to understand photoemission from metallic surfaces. A decade later, Niels Bohr arrived at the correct equation for the electronic spectrum of the hydrogen atom by applying “quantum conditions” on the motion of the electron around the nucleus and the Planck’s relation E = hν on the energy difference between the energy levels (1916). A decade later, Heisenberg, Born, and Jordan introduced “quantum mechanics” and de Broglie and Schrödinger (1925-1926) introduced “wave mechanics.”