Quantum Optics ─ An Introduction

Fox (physics, U. of Sheffield) writes for advanced undergraduates and early graduate students in this foundational text, focusing on photons, atom-photon interactions and quantum informational processing. Although he offers derivations as appropriate, Fox concentrates on intuitive physical understanding and offers illustrations, worked examples and exercises with an emphasis on experimental observations of quantum optical phenomena. He covers classical optics, quantum mechanics, radiative transitions in atoms, photon statistics and antibunching, coherent states and "squeezed light," photon number states, resonant light-atom interactions, atoms in optical cavities, cold atoms, quantum cryptography and computing, entangled states and quantum teleportation. Appendices address Poisson statistics, parametric amplification, the density of states, low-dimensional semiconductor structures, nuclear magnetic resonance, and Bose-Einstein condensation. Annotation c2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Dr A M Fox is Reader in Physics, Dept of Physics and Astronomy, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S3 7RH, UK.