Our Changing Views of Photons A Tutorial Memoir

by Shore, Bruce W.

• ISBN13: 9780198862857
• ISBN10: 0198862857
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2020-11-11
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Author Biography

Bruce W. Shore, Retired,

Dr. Bruce W. Shore received his PhD degree from MIT in 1960, was a Research Fellow at the Harvard College Observatory, an Associate Professor of Physics at Kansas State University, and retired in 2001 from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where for decades he was involved with theory of coherent atomic excitation. He has published, singly and with numerous European colleagues, descriptions of the relevant physics. He has served as an editor of JOSA B and Reviews of Modern Physics and is a Fellow of the OSA and the APS. He has been an academic visitor in the Physics Departments at Imperial College, London, the Technical University of Kaiserslautern, and the Technical University of Darmstadt.

Table of Contents

Preface
The Cartoons
Introduction
1.1. Overview of the memoir narrative
1.2. Preliminaries: Defining terms
1.3. Models of physical phenomena
1.4. Caveats
Basic background: Everyday physics and its math
2.1. Some mathematics
2.2. Particles: Elementary and structured
2.3. Aggregates: Fluids, flows, waves, and granules
2.4. Free space; the Vacuum
2.5. Forces and vectors
2.6. Energy and heat
2.7. Equations of change: Particles and fluids
2.8. Light: Electromagnetic radiation
2.9. Possible radiation granularity; Photons
2.10. Angular momentum: Orbital and spin
2.11. Probabilities
2.12. Quantum states
The photons of P;anck, Einstein and Bohr
3.1. Thermal light: Planck quanta
3.2. Spectroscopy: Photons as energy packets
3.3. Discrete energies of atoms
3.4. The Bohr-Einstein emission and absorption photons
3.5. The photoelectric effect; The Einstein photon
3.6. Scattered photons: Doppler and Compton
3.7. Revised views of Planck, Einstein and Compton photons
3.8. Beyond emitted and absorbed quanta
3.9. Bohr
The Photons of Dirac
4.1. Modes: Electron orbitals and cavity radiation; Superpositions
4.2. Dirac's photons: Mode increments
4.3. Emission and absorption photons
4.4. Comment: Next steps
Photons as population changers
5.1. Interactions, decoherence and ensembles
5.2. Einstein-equation populations; Equilibrium
5.3. Einstein-equation photons; Lasers
5.4. Coherent population changes
5.5. Rabi oscillations
5.6. Assured two-state excitation
5.7. Single atoms, single boxed photons
5.8. The Jaynes-Cummings model; Evidence for photons
5.9. Coherent change; Interaction linkages
5.10. Morris-Shore photons
5.11. Pulsed excitation
5.12. Objectives of quantum-state manipulations; Superpositions
Photon messengers
6.1. Astronomical photons
6.2. Scattered photons
6.3. Electrical circuits
6.4. Information
6.5. Photons as information carriers
6.6. The no-cloning theorem
6.7. Correlation and entaglement
Manipulating photons
7.1. Particle conservation
7.2. Creating single photons
7.3. Detecting photons
7.4. Altering photons
7.5. Storing and restoring photons
7.6. Verifying photons
Overview; Ways of regarding photons
8.1. Historical photons
8.2. Pulsed photons
8.3. Steady, Feynman photons
8.4. Crowds and singles
8.5. Interacting photons
8.6. Doing without photons
8.7. Alternatives to photons
8.8. Contemporary evidence for photons
8.9. Photons in biology
Finale
9.1. A concluding thought
9.2. Basic reference
9.3. Acknowledgements
Appendix A: Atoms and their mathematics
A.1. Classical equations of particle motion
A.2. Measurement; Sizes
A.3. Abstract vector spaces
A.4. Quantization
A.5. Wave mechanics and wavefunctions
A.6. Phase space
A.7. Matrix mechanics and operators
A.8. The statevector
A.9. The time-dependant Schrodinger equation
A.10. Two-state coherent excitation
A.11. Degeneracies and ensembles
A.12. Adiabatic elimination; Multiphoton interaction
A.13. Adiabatic change
A.14. Density matrices and mixed states
A.15. Three-state pulsed coherent excitation
A.16. Radiative rate equations
A.17. Alegebras
A.18. Group theory
A.19. The Standard Model of particle physics
Appendix B: Radiation and photons
B.1. Electromagnetic equations in free space
B.2. Classical field modes; Examples
B.3. Quantized field modes; Dirac photons
B.4. Photon number-statesuperpositions
B.5. Temporal variations; Quantum character
B.6. Alternative views of photons
B.7. Thermal equilibrium; Planck photons
B.8. Incoherent radiation; Photon crowds
Appendix C: Couples atom and field equations
C.1. The Maxwell equations in matter
C.2. Bulk-matter steady response
C.3. Bulk-matter transient sources
C.4. The atom-photon Hamiltonian
C.5. The Jaynes-Cummings model
C.6. Cavity STIRAP
C.7. Paired, product spaces; Entanglement
C.8. The annual greeting cards
References
Index