Quantum Optics and Laser Experiments

"Quantum optics views electromagnetic radiation as traveling in the form of both a wave and a particle, a phenomena called wave particle duality. The most common explanation of how this works is that the photons move in a stream of particles, but the overall behavior of those particles are determined by a quantum wave function that determines the probability of the particles being in a given location at a given time. Quantum optics is a field of research that deals with the application of quantum mechanics to phenomena involving light and its interactions with matter. One of the main goals is to understand the quantum nature of information and to learn how to formulate, manipulate, and process it using physical systems that operate on quantum mechanical principles. Lasers (and masers) are the most obvious application of quantum optics. Light emitted from these devices are in a coherent state, which means the light closely resembles a classical sinusoidal wave. In this coherent state, the quantum mechanical wave function (and thus the quantum mechanical uncertainty) is distributed equally. The light emitted from a laser is, therefore, highly ordered, and generally limited to essentially the same energy state. Quantum Optics and Laser Experiments embraces a wide spectrum of problems falling under the concepts of "Quantum optics" and "Laser experiments". These actively developing branches of physics are of great significance both for theoretical understanding of the quantum nature of optical phenomena and for practical applications. The book contains theoretical contributions devoted to such problems as providing a general approach to describe electromagnetic field states with correlation functions of different nature, nonclassical properties of some superpositions of field states in time-varying media, photon localization, mathematical apparatus that is necessary for field state reconstruction on the basis of restricted set of observables, and quantum electrodynamics processes in strong fields provided by pulsed laser beams."