PHYS 442 Quantum optics

Quantum optics is where you stop treating light as a classical wave and start taking the photon seriously as a quantum object, building up the machinery, field quantization, coherent and squeezed states, photon statistics, needed to describe experiments that ordinary electrodynamics simply cannot explain. Most of the term is spent on how quantized light couples to atoms, working through the Rabi and Jaynes-Cummings models, cavity QED, and three-level effects like EIT and STIRAP, before closing with open-system decoherence and master equations. Assessment leans on a project and a presentation rather than exams, so you spend real time reading current literature and writing it up. Coming out of standard quantum mechanics and E&M, this is the natural bridge into modern AMO, quantum information, and laser-cooling research.