PHYS 685: Quantum Optics II (Winter 2011)

Instructor: Daniel A. Steck
Office: 277 Willamette      Phone: 346-5313      email: dsteck@uoregon.edu
Office hours: walk-in or by appointment (best to email first)
Course home page: http://atomoptics.uoregon.edu/~dsteck/teaching/11winter/phys685

Schedule: MWF 11:00-12:00, 318 Willamette
Course reference number: 24910
Credits: 4
Prerequisites: PHYS 684

Links: news, course notes, homework sets and keys.

Course overview

This course is a continuation of Mike Raymer's course from last term. This course will provide a broad overview of quantum-mechanical interactions between light and matter. We will focus mainly on light-atom interactions and thus we will also do some atomic structure. This term we will focus on the quantized electromagnetic field, with extra topics chosen according to interests of the class.

Text:

I will provide typeset lecture notes for the course. They are available in composite form at this link, but I will also post separate versions for each lecture.

Grades

Grades for the course will be based on homework and an take-home final exam. The relative weights will be as follows:

• Homework: 50%
• Final exam: 50%

Homework: problem sets will be assigned approximately biweekly during the term.

Final exam: the final exam is a take-home exam, due during the reguarly scheduled time of Wednesday, 16 March, 2011, at noon.

Pass/fail grading option: a passing grade requires the equivalent of a C- grade on all the course work (homework and final).

Syllabus

This is a tentative list of topics to cover in this course (topics will be chosen according to class interest and time constraints). The actual list of topics by lecture will be posted throughout the term on the notes page.

• Quantization of the Electromagnetic Field, Helmholtz Theorem, Field Commutators
• Atom-Field Interaction, Minimal Coupling, Power-Zienau Transformation
• Single-Mode Interactions (Jaynes-Cummings Model)
• Broadband Interactions (Spontaneous Emission, Cavity Decay)
• Quantum Vacuum Effects (Casimir-Polder forces, Lamb shift)
• Photon Counting and Homodyne Detection
• Stochastic Processes (Ito Calculus, Poisson Processes)
• Open Quantum Systems and Continuous Quantum Measurements
• Quantum Noise in the Heisenberg Picture/Input-Output Theory
• Resolvent Method
• Resonance Fluorescence in Two- and Three-Level Atoms
• Angular-Momentum Structure of Real Atoms

Here is a calendar for the course; due to travel commitments, some courses will be rescheduled at a time convenient for the majority of the class.