Khanbekyan Lab

Macroscopic Quantum Electrodynamics of High-Q Cavities

• Course Description

  Cavity quantum electrodynamics is a relatively new but rapidly advancing re- search field in quantum optics. It is a cornerstone of quantum information sci- ence, cryptography and telecommunication. In this course we will review basic concepts and theoretical formalism of cavity QED. We will cover quantization of light, formalism to describe quantum states of light without any classical analogue, interaction of quantized light with matter, new technologies based on quantum properties of light etc. The preliminary syllabus comprises two weeks of the course with eight lectures and eight seminar session, part of which will represent discussion sessions of journal papers.

• Prerequisites

  A course in electromagnetism or optics and a course in quantum mechanics

• Material

  There are no required textbooks. Some good and relevant textbooks are:

  • • Quantum Optics by M. Scully and S. Zuberi
  • • Quantum Optics by D. F. Walls and G. J. Milburn
  • • Elements of Quantum Optics by P. Meystre and M. Sargent
  • • Quantum Optics by W. Vogel and D.-G. Welsch

• Lectures

  • CQED: brief history. Review of quantum mechanics.
  • Quantization of light. Simple harmonic oscillator.
  • Quantum electrodynamics, quantization of radiation.
  • Quantum states of light and non-classical photon statistics.
  • Quantum description of a two-level system.
  • Optical and microwave strong coupling.
  • Macroscopic QED in absorbing and dispersing media: high-Q structures.
  • Quantum information processing in cavity QED.

• Articles to review

  • Observation of normal-mode splitting for an atom in an optical cavity
    https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.68.1132

  • Quantum Rabi Oscillation: A Direct Test of Field Quantization in a Cavity
    https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.76.1800

  • Observation of the Vacuum Rabi Spectrum for One Trapped Atom
    https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.93.233603

  • Quantum State Transfer and Entanglement Distribution among Distant Nodes in a Quantum Network
    https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.78.3221

  • Photon blockade in an optical cavity with one trapped atom
    https://doi.org/10.1038/nature03804

  • Single-photon generation with InAs quantum dots
    http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1367-2630/6/1/089

  • Climbing the Jaynes–Cummings ladder and observing its nonlinearity in a cavity QED system
    http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature07112

  • Optical bistability and photon statistics in cavity quantum electrodynamics
    https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.67.1727

  • Observation of Cavity-Mediated Long-Range Light Forces between Strongly Coupled Atoms
    https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.84.4068

  • Linear and nonlinear optical spectroscopy of a strongly coupled microdisk–quantum dot system
    https://doi.org/10.1038/nature06274