Term: Spring 2024 (Mid-sem feedback, End-sem feedback)
Instructor: Girish Kulkarni
Teaching assistant: Rajneesh Fulara
Venue and timings for lectures: M-1, S. Radhakrishnan Complex, IIT Ropar
Office hours: 4-6 PM on Tuesdays and Thursdays (4 hours per week) at Office No 17, Top M Floor, Super Academic Block (southern side)
Course prerequisites: Basic knowledge of quantum mechanics and classical electromagnetism
Course objective: To present a comprehensive introduction to salient ideas in quantum optics
Evaluation policy: 20% Assignments + 10% quizzes + 30% Mid-term exam + 40% end-term exam
List of topics covered: Historical overview, review of quantum theory, states in the ket notation, density matrices, linear operators, Pauli operators, Schrodinger evolution, quantum harmonic oscillator, review of Maxwell’s equations, polarization states, Bloch sphere and degree of polarization, temporal coherence and Wiener-Khintchine theorem, spatial coherence and van Cittert-Zernike theorem, orbital angular momentum of light, semiclassical theory of photodetection, Hanbury-Brown Twiss effect, quantization of the EM field, optical modes as harmonic oscillators, concept of a photon, zero-point energy, Glauber’s theory of photodetection and the quantum theory of optical coherence, photon statistics, coherent states as minimum uncertainty states, vacuum fluctuations, Casimir force, quasiprobability distributions, squeezed states, photon antibunching, single-photon states and entangled two-photon states, two-photon interference, Hong-Ou-Mandel effect, two-level systems, semiclassical model of light-matter interactions, Einstein A and B coefficients, Rabi oscillations, spontaneous emission, Wigner-Weisskopf derivation, optical cavities, cavity QED, Jaynes-Cummings model, collapse and revival
phenomena
Note: As the course is being offered to undergraduates (including non-physics majors) and graduates who may or may not have taken a comprehensive course on quantum mechanics before, some initial lectures of the course will review the selected basics of quantum theory that will be particularly important for the subsequent phase of the course.
Textbooks and reference material: