Interaction of Photons with Matter

Gudrun Alm Carlsson, David A. B. Dance

L. Lanco

E. Garmire

Topics in Photonics.- Properties and Description of Light.- Linear Interactions between Light and Matter.- Nonlinear Interactions of Light and Matter without Absorption.- Nonlinear Interactions of Light and Matter with Absorption.- Lasers.- Nonlinear Optical Spectroscopy.- References.

Pablo L. Saldanha, Carlos Henrique Monken

The Bialynicki-BirulaSipe photon wave function formalism is extended to include the interaction between photons and continuous lossless media. This extended formalism leads to a new method for describing quantum interactions between light and matter.

J. C. Webber

Angela Thränhardt

This chapter considers electron–photon interaction, i.e., light–matter coupling. It introduces the theoretical treatment of electron–photon interaction for different and mostly strongly simplified cases. In resonator structures, calculation of the appropriate photon modes is required to allow access to the strength of electron–photon coupling. The general guideline is that light may be treated as a wave when propagating in vacuum, yet it has to be quantized in the case of the interaction with matter. In any ensemble of atoms or molecules in interaction with an electromagnetic field, there are three processes occurring: spontaneous emission, absorption, and stimulated emission. In order to get a flavor of a many-body treatment of electron–photon interaction, the derivation of the semiconductor Bloch equations will be discussed briefly. The strength of the light field at the location of the electron determines the interaction strength between light and matter.