Quantum Optics
RESEARCH FACULTY
The field of quantum optics emphasizes the investigation and control of the basic interaction processes between light and matter. The initial motivation for research in this field, in the 1960s, was the idea that some properties of detected light fields could not be explained by classical models of fluctuating light sources, but required a quantum mechanical description in terms of photons. Powered by advances in laser physics in the 1970s and 1980s, the field has grown to have a strong impact on areas such as laser spectroscopy and interferometry, investigations of photon statistics, laser cooling and trapping of atoms and molecules, the physics of ultra-cold atomic gases, and quantum information. Ideas from quantum optics have also found application in experiments that involve the wave nature of atoms, the field of matter-wave optics.
At Georgia Tech, one of the nation's largest quantum optics programs involves theoretical and experimental research in the areas of quantum information, cavity quantum electrodynamics, and Bose-Einstein condensed atomic gases.
