Quantum Optics [Hardcover]

Marlan O. Scully (Author), M. Suhail Zubairy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 28, 1997 | ISBN-10: 0521434580 | ISBN-13: 978-0521434584

Quantum optics has witnessed significant theoretical and experimental developments in recent years. This book provides an in-depth and wide-ranging introduction to the subject, emphasizing throughout the basic principles and their applications. The book begins by developing the basic tools of quantum optics, and goes on to show the application of these tools in a variety of quantum optical systems, including lasing without inversion, squeezed states, and atom optics. The final four chapters discuss quantum optical tests of the foundations of quantum mechanics, and particular aspects of measurement theory. Assuming only a background of standard quantum mechanics and electromagnetic theory, and containing many problems and references, this book will be invaluable to graduate students of quantum optics, as well as to researchers in this field.

Editorial Reviews

Review

."..Quantum Optics is very impressive and arguably the best book available for the reader who wants to get the leading edges of the field in the least amount of time." Physics Today

Book Description

The field of quantum optics has witnessed significant theoretical and experimental developments in recent years. Assuming only a background of standard quantum mechanics and electromagnetic theory, this text provides an in-depth and wide-ranging introduction to the subject.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 652 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (September 28, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521434580
• ISBN-13: 978-0521434584
• Product Dimensions: 9.7 x 6.8 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,160,535 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not an easy text for self study, November 27, 2005

By 

Stephen K. Parrott (Gardnerville, NV USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Quantum Optics (Paperback)

I am a mathematician with extensive experience in electrodynamics and
quantum mechanics. I read this book to teach myself quantum optics.
Since I read it as a self-study text,
I will review it from that perspective.

I didn't find this to be a good pedagogical book.
It is the first quantum optics book that I read,
and I didn't get much out of it.
Thinking that perhaps the problem was inadequate background,
I then read from cover to cover Elementary Quantum Optics by Gerry and Knight.
Although there are some problems with the latter
which are addressed in a separate review,
it did make more sense.

With Gerry/Knight under my belt,
I returned to reread Scully/Zubairy.
It didn't make much more sense the second time than the first.

The presentation of Scully/Zubairy is often sloppy
and too diffuse. Like too many physics texts, it
doesn't always carefully define all its symbols, and
it frequently sneaks in important assumptions
without explicit mention.
It demands a lot of guesswork from the reader.

For example, Chapter 1 tells us that

"as we will discuss in [Chapter 4],
the probability of exciting an atom ...
is governed by [formula (1.5.12)]".

This is a crucial formula, one of the most important in the book.
If the reader turns ahead to Chapter 4,
he does reassuringly find it in equation (4.2.4).
The impression given is that it has somehow been derived
in the intervening 100-odd pages.
But it hasn't,
so far as I have been able to discover.

Is this crucial formula
a new assumption of quantum optics,
or does it somehow follow from
established quantum-mechanical principles?
The reader is left to guess.
Readers who are satisfied
to accept unmotivated statements on authority
may be happier with this book than
readers who seek a fundamental understanding of
the logical structure of the subject.

I was particularly interested in the
Hanbury Brown and Twiss experiment treated in Chapter 4,
so I read that chapter particularly carefully.
Indeed I read it very carefully several times,
but I was forced to consult other sources
to understand this experiment.
I think that the text's treatment omits important,
non-obvious assumptions and contains some errors.
However, study of other sources finally convinced me that
the text's final result, equation (4.1.26),
is probably correct.
(Incidentally, I think that the treatment
of this important experiment in Gerry/Knight is also inadequate.)

Figure (4.6) which purports to be
a diagram of this experiment
contains a component which produces a "delay time",
but the text's analysis
never explains the purpose of this component.
From other sources I've learned that
the delay time is extremely important
for some variants of this experiment.
This is fairly typical of the text's haphazard approach.

Chapter 20 discusses a "quantum eraser" experiment whose
result is so startling that Scully and Zubairy
cite Jaynes as considering it
a paradox, a "violent irrationality"
(as Scully and Zubairy paraphrase Jaynes).
It certainly seems that way to me,
and I would very much like to understand this experiment better.

Scully and Zubairy never make clear
if this is an actual experiment which has been performed,
or a "thought experiment".
Surely the exposition of such remarkable claims should be more explicit.

They present a calculation which is claimed to
"resolve the 'Jaynes paradox'".
I was disappointed that I could not follow this calculation because
its exposition is far too vague.
In particular, they obtain their main result, equation (20.3.5),
under the assumption that "the interaction Hamiltonian ... depends
on symmetric combinations of the field variables, so that only the symmetric
state ... will couple to the fields".
This might be convincing if they had ever defined their "interaction Hamiltonian",
but the reader is left to guess at which interaction Hamiltonian they might be using.

I cannot recommend this book for readers
who are not experts in quantum optics.
I cannot judge whether it might be useful to experts.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A helpful book, but far from easy., February 19, 2006

By 

Hui Fang "booklover" (NASHVILLE, TN United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Quantum Optics (Paperback)

Compared to Wolf and Mandel's tome "Optical Coherence and Quantum Optics", this book gives the reader a lighter job on math without him reading over 100 pages on probability theory and fourier transform. However, this book has two major drawbacks:

1. The author keeps refering to later chapters on some important concept. When I read the first two chapters, I have many undefined concept and unanswered questions, whose answer may be put in chapter 16! For those who are already familiar with this field, it may not be a problem. But a rookie may want a lucid and detailed introduction in the beginning.

2. Some calculation should be elaborated because the result is far from obvious.

5.0 out of 5 stars Comprehensive and informative, August 19, 2011

By 

Mark (Boston, MA, United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Quantum Optics (Paperback)

This is an outstanding text in the quickly expanding field of quantum optics, by an author producing some of the most revolutionary experiments. Although my only objective is the order materials are presented, it is comprehensive and easy to understand. One of only 2 or 3 exceptional texts on the topic.
Mark Brezinski MD,PhD Harvard, BWH, MIT