Finally found an awesome course.....

After almost two weeks of confusions which course will be available for us or not, its finally sure that the course we were looking for on Quantum Optics by Prof B.N.Jagatap (Homi Bhabha National Institute) is going to be started next week. There are a total of nine students so far registered for this course. Today the prof has sent a file containing the course contents. Quite contrary to our expectations, the course contents are not so boring, in fact they are really worth learning. The file he has sent contains the following:

Objective: To provide an understanding of the quantum nature of light and to teach how quantum optics serves as a test bed for the foundations of quantum mechanics

Pre-requisite: Course in advanced quantum mechanics

Contents:

Quantum theory of light: field quantization, lamb shift, quantum beats

Quantum theory of coherence: Photon detection and quantum coherence functions first order coherence and Young’s double source experiment, second order coherence, Physics behind Hanburry-Brown and Twiss experiment, interference of two photons, photon antibunching, Poissonian and sub-Poissonian light, photon counting and photon statistics

Classical and nonclassical light: coherent, Fock and squeezed states of light, coherent state as an eigen state of annihilation operator and as a displaced harmonic oscillator state, properties of coherent state, Physics of squeezed states, squeezed state and uncertainty relation, squeezed coherent state, quadrature variance, multimode squeezing, squeezing via nonlinear optical processes, applications of squeezed states for quantum noise reduction beyond standard shot noise limit

EPR paradox, hidden variables, Bell’s theorem and quantum cryptography

Quantum nondemolition (QND) measurement: conditions for QND, QND measurement of photon number by optical Kerr effect and by dispersive atom- field coupling, QND measurement in optical parametric processes

Quantum optical tests of complimentarity: A micro maser which path detector, quantum eraser and quantum optical Ramsey fringes.

We were worried about the course thinking that the instructor may go on teaching stuffs like LASER etc which we had already done last year. But it appears to be quite opposite. The foundation of quantum mechanics is one of the toughest problems yet to be solved completely and lots of research works are still going on. So hopefully this course will give us a good feeling of that field of which we never got any exposure.