Classical Electromagnetic Fields

Pierre Meystre, Murray Sargent

Pierre Meystre, Murray Sargent

James K. Baird

Wayne C. Myrvold

This article examines the implications of the holonomy interpretation of classical electromagnetism. As has been argued by Richard Healey and Gordon Belot, classical electromagnetism on this interpretation evinces a form of nonseparability, something that otherwise might have been thought of as confined to nonclassical physics. Consideration of the differences between this classical nonseparability and quantum nonseparability shows that the nonseparability exhibited by the classical electromagnetism on the holonomy interpretation is closer to separability than might at first appear. 1 Introduction 2 Interpretations of Classical Electromagnetism 3 Quantum Nonseparability 4 The Holonomy Representation of the Classical Electromagnetic Field 5 Holonomy and Nonseparability: The Classical Electromagnetic Field 6 On Humean Supervenience 7 Conclusion

G. Grynberg, Alain Aspect, Claude Fabre +1 more

We investigate in this chapter the general problem of the interaction of an atom (or a molecule) and a classical electromagnetic field. Its importance derives firstly from the fact that a large part of our knowledge of atoms is obtained from a study of the radiation they absorb or emit (we shall consider equally visible radiation and radio-frequency and X-rays) and, secondly, that the interaction with matter modifies the propagation of the electromagnetic field itself, notably through absorption, refraction or scattering. The interactions of atoms with light therefore encompass a vast range of physical effects that we could not hope to cover adequately in a single chapter. In this chapter we shall therefore present the fundamental features of the interaction of an atom, which will be treated quantum mechanically, with a classical electromagnetic field, that is an electromagnetic field described by real electric and magnetic vectors obeying Maxwell's equations. A rigorous description of the atom–light interaction would have to take into account the quantum nature of light. This we shall leave to Chapter 6. It turns out, nevertheless, that many important results can be obtained from the semi-classical viewpoint adopted here (although it is perhaps more appropriate to refer to this treatment as ‘semi-quantized’).

Anna V. Bogatskaya, A. M. Popov

We consider the dynamics of an atom that interacts with one mode of an electromagnetic field in a microcavity. We discuss the reconstruction of the spectrum of atomic states and the occurrence of a stabilization effect for the case of a nonclassical state of the field mode, in particular, a squeezed vacuum state. We show that, for nonclassical fields, an ionization-suppression effect also arises (stabilization), which is similar to the Kramers-Henneberger stabilization in a classical electromagnetic field, and, for squeezed states of the electromagnetic field, the stabilization threshold is several times smaller than that for the classical electro-magnetic field of the same intensity.