Quantum Theory of Optical Coherence

By R. Glauber. 2006

1,140 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The concept of coherence which has conventionally been used in optics is found to be inadequate to the needs of recently opened areas of experiment. To provide a fuller discussion of coherence, a succession of correlation functions for the complex 6eld strengths is de6ned. The nth order function expresses the correlation of values of the fields at 2n different points of space and time. Certain values of these functions are measurable by means of n-fold delayed coincidence detection of photons. A fully coherent field is defined as one whose correlation functions satisfy an in6nite succession of stated conditions. Various orders of incomplete coherence are distinguished, according to the number of coherence conditions actually satis6ed. It is noted that the 6elds historically described as coherent in optics have only first-order coherence. On the other hand, the existence, in principle, of 6elds coherent to all orders is shown both in quantum theory and classical theory. The methods used in these discussions apply to fields of arbitrary time dependence. It is shown, as a result, that coherence does not require monochromaticity. Coherent fields can be generated with arbitrary spectra.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Biophysics, Electrical and Electronic Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/bc1108ded6ff6de59be5519118e4352ad0c51aba

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Citations in the corpus

Probing multimode squeezing with correlation functions (2010, background): “For quantized electric field operators, it can be expressed as [1, 10, 26, 27]”
The Unruh effect and its applications (2007, background): “Models of photon detectors have been discussed for some time in quantum optics (Glauber, 1963).”
Photon wave functions, wave-packet quantization of light, and coherence theory (2007, neutral): “Assuming the use of conventional photodetectors, which respond only to the electric field, the two-photon detection amplitude is given by [22, 25, 44, 65-67] AD 2 ( ) x1, x2 ( ) = vac Ê + ( ) x1 ( ) Ê + ( ) x2 ( ) 2 ( ) .”
Quantum plasmonics (2013, neutral): “d dt ρan,bm+1 = −ig √ m+ 1ρan,am − γρan,bm+1 (33)”
A Survey on Quantum Channel Capacities (2018, background): “One of the most important result on the mechanism of the encoding of quantum information into physical particles was discovered by Glauber in the very early years of quantum information processing [183] and a great summarize from more than four-decades later [182].”
Roadmap on quantum light spectroscopy (2020, background): “In 1963 Roy J Glauber showed [4] that a classical current radiates a coherent state.”
Factorization: little or great algorithm? (2004, background): “While the advantages of Gaussian packets were known for a long time [174], it was not noted till 1963 [175] (see also [176]) that they are the eigenstates of the (non-Hermitian) operator A = 1 √ 2 (ip + x):”
Quantitative Phase Imaging (2012, background): “It is rather significant that half of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Glauber “for his contribution to the quantum theory of optical coherence.””
Strings in Background Fields (2016, background): “For reference see [8,9] and for instance [13].”
Quantum metrology and its application in biology (2014, methodology): “As pointed out by Glauber [45], there exist rigorous bounds on the values that these classical coherence functions can take.”