Sudarshan and Modern Quantum Optics

Jin-sheng Peng, Gao‐xiang Li

E. Wolf

As is evident from the scope of this meeting, Sudarshan's scientific interests and contributions have covered a broad area of physics.Among them optics plays a very prominent role.I say optics rather than quantum optics, as is so fashionable these days, because many of Sudarshan's investigations have been particularly concerned with some striking analogies and some remarkable similarities which were found to exist between these two fields, particularly in the domain of optical coherence.In fact some of Sudarshan's contributions to this area have been largely responsible for the clarifications of several subtle questions, which in the 1960s -soon after the invention of the laser -were rather controversial.I take some pride in having been responsible -together with my colleague Leonard Mandel -for stimulating Sudarshan's interest in this field.

N. Bloembergen

P. D. Drummond, Piotr Deuar, Joel Frederick Corney

Phase-space representations are of increasing importance as a viable and successful means to study exponentially complex quantum many-body systems from first principles. This paper traces the background of these methods, starting from the early work of Wigner, Glauber and Sudarshan. We focus on modern phase-space approaches using non-classical phase-space representations. These lead to the Gaussian representation, which unifies bosonic and fermionic phase-space. Examples treated include quantum solitons in optical fibers, colliding Bose-Einstein condensates, and strongly correlated fermions on lattices.

Ryuji Ukai

Thomas Durt, Victor N. Zadkov