Module overview
While coherence phenomena have long been familiar in the context of light waves, their manifestation in the context of matter waves is an exciting development of modern quantum science. This course aims to introduce the basic concepts needed to understand Quantum coherent phenomena, and the relevant experiments to probe such properties. We will study classical as well as quantum correlations which can be properties of light and matter. We will start briefly revisiting classical electrodynamics and quantum mechanics. We will then introduce the concept of photon, discuss photon statistics and noise, meet correlation functions and discuss relevant interferometry experiments. We will then discuss non-classical coherent and squeezed states such as Fock states. We will then discuss light-matter interaction as in cavity-QED. Finally, some applications of coherent light and coherent matter may include the discussion of examples such as Bose-Einstein condensation, quantum entanglement as well as selected topics from quantum communications, decoherence theory and quantum computing.
The approach in this lecture is rather phenomenological, while still introducing the typical mathematical tools to evaluate coherence and to describe the electromagnetic field in a quantum formalism. We hope that this will provide students with an ideal basis to understand coherent phenomena in all kinds of physical systems and provide an introduction to the field of quantum technologies.
Linked modules
Pre-requisites: PHYS3002 AND PHYS3004 AND PHYS3007 AND PHYS3008