Readings

Along with the book recommendations there are some reading assignments for the course.

Book Recommendations

Text: There was no textbook. The course was based on several books and original publications.

The book most relevant to the course was:

Cohen-Tannoudji, Claude, Jaques Dupont-Roc, and Gilbert Grynberg. Atom-Photon-Interactions: Basic Processes and Applications. New York, NY: Wiley-Interscience, 1998. ISBN: 9780471293361.

Some additional material used were:

Loudon, Rodney. The Quantum Theory of Light. Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon Press, 2000. ISBN: 9780198501763.
Weissbluth, Mitchel. Photon-Atom Interactions. Boston, MA: Academic Press, 1989. ISBN: 9780127436609.
Dalibard, J., J. M. Raimond, and J. Zinn-Justin, eds. Proceeding of the Summer School in Les Houches 1990: Fundamental Systems in Quantum Optics. Les Houches, Session LIII, 1990. Elsevier, 1992.
Arimondo, E., W. D. Phillips, and F. Strumia, eds. Proceeding of the summer school in Varenna 1991: Laser Manipulation of Atoms and Ions, Proceedings of the International School of Physics "Enrico Fermi." Course CXVIII. Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1992.

Further books used to prepare the courses 8.421 and 8.422:

Cohen-Tannoudji, Claude. Atoms in Electromagnetic Fields. Singapore: World Scientific, 2005. (Selected Original Papers of C. -T.) ISBN: 9789812389428.
Recommended.

Allen, L., and J. H. Eberly. Optical Resonance and Two-level Atoms. New York, NY: Dover, 1987. ISBN: 9780486655338.
Covers some more special topics very well: Bloch Equations, Pulse Propagation, Echoes, Superradiance.
Demtröder, W. Laser Spectroscopy. Berlin, Germany: Springer, 2002. ISBN: 9783540652250.
Almost encyclopedic book on lasers, spectroscopic instruments and techniques, and all relevant methods of spectroscopy - lots of references, very useful.
Svelto, O. Principle of Lasers. New York, NY: Plenum, 2007. ISBN: 9780306457487.
Mainly on lasers (Basic Principles, Resonators, Types of Lasers), but nice short discussions of coherence and other concepts.
Svanberg, S. Atomic and Molecular Spectroscopy. Berlin, Germany: Springer, 2004. ISBN: 9783540203827.
A lot of similar topics as Demtröder's book, but less detailed. A longer chapter on applications of laser spectroscopy.
Corney, A. Atomic and Laser Spectroscopy. Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon, 1987. ISBN: 9780198511489.
This book is on atoms, discusses hyperfine structure, selection rules and other effects in detail, and gives many examples of techniques and experiments. Gives a very good impression of the state of experimental atomic physics in the '70s.
Thorne, A. P. Spectrophysics. London, U.K.: Chapman, 1988. ISBN: 9780412274701.
Nice book on spectroscopy, with some emphasis on classical methods and plasma spectroscopy. Long chapter on line widths and shapes.
Scully, M. O., and M. S. Zubairy. Quantum Optics. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1997. ISBN: 9780521434584.
The theory of quantum optics! Detailed treatment of coherence and electromagnetically induced transparency, laser theory.
Suter, D. The Physics of Laser-atom Interactions. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1997. ISBN: 9780521462396.
Detailed discussion of three-level systems and coherent effects.

Reading Assignments

Course readings.
Lec #	Topics	Readings
1	1. Introduction 2. Classical Molasses and Beam Slowing 2.1. The Spontaneous Light Force 2.2. 1D Optical Molasses 2.3. The Doppler Cooling Limit 2.4. Beam Slowing	Phillips, W. D. "Laser Cooling and Trapping of Neutral Atoms." In Laser Manipulation of Atoms and Ions. Edited by E. Arimondo, W. D. Phillips, and F. Strumia. Proceedings of the International School of Physics "Enrico Fermi", Course CXVIII. Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1992, pp. 289-304. (The second part on atom traps was covered later in the course). Alternatively see this (PDF - 4.9 MB) Three-Dimensional Viscous Confinement and Cooling of Atoms by Resonance Radiation Pressure One-page note on Chirped Slowing (PDF) Phillips, W. D., J. V. Prodan, and H. J. Metcalf. "Laser Cooling and Electromagnetic Trapping of Neutral Atoms." J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 2, no. 1761 (1985). Lett, P. D., W. D. Phillips, S. L. Rolston, C. E. Tanner, R. N. Watts, and C. I. Westbrook. "Optical Molasses." J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 6, no. 2084 (1989). Ertmer, W., R. Blatt, J. L. Hall, and M. Zhu. "Laser Manipulation of Atomic Beam Velocities: Demonstration of Stopped Atoms and Velocity Reversal." Phys. Rev. Lett. 54, no. 996 (1985). Ketterle, W., A. Martin, M. A. Joffe, and D. E. Pritchard. "Slowing and Cooling Atoms in Isotropic Laser Light." Phys. Rev. Lett. 69, no. 2483 (1992). Barrett, T. E., S. W. Dapore-Schwartz, M. D. Ray, and G. P. Lafyatis. "Slowing Atoms with (Sigma-minus) Polarized Light." Phys. Rev. Lett. 67, no. 3483 (1991).
2	2.5. Energy vs. Momentum Picture 2.6. 3D Molasses and Higher Intensity 2.7. Momentum and Spatial Diffusion
3	3. The QED Hamiltonian	Viewgraphs used in class (PDF) Weissbluth, Mitchel. Photon Atom Interactions. Boston, MA: Academic Press Inc., 1989. ISBN: 978-0127436609. The discussion follows the appendix in Atom-Photon Interactions, pp. 621-643. A 500-page derivation and discussion of the basic equations of QED can be found in: Cohen-Tannoudji, Claude, Jaques Dupont-Roc, and Gilbert Grynberg. Photons and Atoms - Introduction to Quantum Electrodynamics. New York, NY: Wiley-Interscience, 1997. ISBN: 9780471184331. I would recommend consulting this book whenever you want to know more about the "exact" formulation of the theory. I am always amazed how easily you can open this book in the middle and still understand the explanations.
4	4. Properties of Light 4.1. The Quantized Radiation Field 4.1.1. Thermal States (Chaotic Light) 4.1.2. Coherent States; Q(Alpha) Representation 4.1.3. Fluctuations, Noise, and Second Order Coherence 4.1.4. Single Photon States and the Hanbury-Brown Twiss Experiment	Loudon, Rodney. "Chaotic Light." The Quantum Theory of Light. 3rd ed. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2000, ISBN: 9780198501763. Chapter 3 on chaotic light. Weissbluth, Mitchel. Photon Atom Interactions. Boston, MA: Academic Press Inc., 1989. ISBN: 9780127436609. Chapter 4.4-4.8 on the radiation field up to squeezing. Enhanced Single-photon Emission from a Quantum Dot in a Micropost Microcavity (PDF) and Deterministic Single-Photon Source for Distributed Quantum Networking Group Papers (Example of Single Photon g⁽²⁾(tau) meas.)
5	4.2. Squeezed States of Light 4.2.1. The Displacement and Squeeze Operators 4.2.2. Generation of Squeezed States, Classical Squeezing 4.2.3. Homodyne Detection 4.2.4. Teleportation	Weissbluth, Mitchel. Photon Atom Interactions. Boston, MA: Academic Press Inc., 1989. ISBN: 9780127436609. Chapter 4.9. Section on squeezed states. Kimble, H. J. "Quantum Fluctuations in Quantum Optics" in Fundamental Systems in Quantum Optics, Edited by J. Dalibard, J. M. Raimond, and J. Zinn-Justin. Proceeding of the Summer School in Les Houches, Session LIII, 1990. Elsevier, 1992. Extensive and Advanced Treatment of Squeezed Light. Henry, R. W., and S. C. Glotzer. "A Squeezed-state Primer." Am. J. Phys. 56, no. 318 (1988). Basic discussion using only elementary quantum mechanics. Teich, M. C., and B. E. A. Saleh. "Squeezed and AntiBunched Light." Physics Today, June 1990. Popular article on non-classical light. One page, lecture notes by Dave Pritchard (PDF) (Courtesy of Dave Pritchard. Used with permission.) DiFilippo, F., et al. "Classical Amplitude Squeezing for Precision Measurements." PRL 68, no. 2859 (1992). Furusawa, A., et al. "Unconditional Quantum Teleportation." Science 282, no. 706 (1998).
6	4.2.5. Beam Splitter and Homodyne Detection 4.2.6. Experiments with Squeezed Light	Three pages lecture notes by W. K. (PDF) Schumaker, B. L. "Noise in Homodyne Detection." Optics Letters 9, no. 189 (1984). Wu, Ling-An, H. J. Kimble, J. L. Hall, and H. Wu. "Generation of Squeezed States by Parametric Down Conversion." PRL 57, no. 2520 (1986). Xiao, Min, Ling-An Wu, and H. J. Kimble. "Precision Measurement beyond the Shot-Noise Limit." PRL 59, no. 279 (1987). Polzik, E. S., J. Carri, and H. J. Kimble. "Spectroscopy with Squeezed Light." PRL 68, no. 3020 (1992).
7	4.3. Interferometry and Entanglement 4.3.1. Gravitational Wave Detection 4.3.2. Heisenberg Limited Interferometry	Caves, C. M. "Quantum-mechanical Noise in an Interferometer." Phys. Rev. D 23 (1981): 1693-1708. Giovannetti, Vittorio, Seth Lloyd, and Lorenzo Maccone. "Quantum-Enhanced Measurements: Beating the Standard Quantum Limit." Preprint quant-ph/0412078. Proposal for Atom Interferometry: Bouyer, P., M. A. Kasevich. "Heisenberg-limited Spectroscopy with Degenerate Bose-Einstein Gases." PRA 56, no. R1083 (1997). Creation of Correlated States with Bose-Einstein Condensates: Vogels, J. M., J. K. Chin, and W. Ketterle. "Coherent Collisions between Bose-Einstein Condensates." PRL 90, no. 030403 (2003).
8	4.3.3. Entanglement	Sackett, C. A., D. Kielpinski, B. E. King, C. Langer, V. Meyer, C. J. Myatt, M. Rowe, Q. A. Turchette, W. M. Itano, D. J. Wineland, and C. Monroe. "Experimental Entanglement of Four Particles." Nature 404, no. 256 (2000). Excerpts from Nielsen, Michael A., and Isaac L. Chuang. "Schmidt Decomposition." In Quantum Computation and Quantum Information. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 109-117. ISBN: 9780521635035.
9	5. Basic Aspects of the Interaction between Light and Atoms
10	5.1. Transition Amplitudes and Diagrams 5.2. Some Interaction Processes between Photons and Atoms 5.2.1. Emission 5.2.2. Absorption 5.2.3. Scattering 5.3. Resonant Scattering and Radiative Corrections	Cohen-Tannoudji, Claude, Jaques Dupont-Roc, and Gilbert Grynberg. Atom-Photon-Interactions, Basic Processes and Applications. New York, NY: Wiley-Interscience, 1992, pp. 15-22, complement A, chapters II and III. ISBN: 9780471293361. Extra topic: Hanbury-Brown and Twiss Experiment and the g2 Function: Baym, Gordon. Lectures on Quantum Mechanics. W. A. Benjamin, 1974, pp. 430-435. ASIN: B0006WMD6G. Yasuda, Masami, and Fujio Shimizu. "Observation of Two-Atom Correlation of an Ultracold Neon Atomic Beam." Physical Review Letters 77, no. 15 (1996). PRL on HBT experiment with cold atoms. Dalibard, J., J. Dupont-Roc, and Claude Cohen-Tannoudji. "Vacuum Fluctuations and Radiation Reaction: Identification of Their Respective Contributions." J. Physique 43 (1982): 1617-1638.
11	5.4. Interaction by Photon Exchange and Collisions 5.4.1. Van der Waals Interaction	Cohen-Tannoudji, Claude, Jaques Dupont-Roc, and Gilbert Grynberg. Atom-Photon-Interactions, Basic Processes and Applications. New York, NY: Wiley-Interscience, 1998, pp. 118-126. ISBN: 9780471293361. Spruch, L. "Retarded, or Casimir, Long-range Potentials." Physics Today paper (Nov 1986): 37.
12	5.4.2. Casimir Interactions 5.4.3. Langevin Model for Inelastic Collisions	Course notes (WK) (PDF) Haroche, S. "Cavity Quantum Electrodynamics" in Fundamental Systems in Quantum Optics, Edited by J. Dalibard, J. M. Raimond, and J. Zinn-Justin. Proceeding of the Summer School in Les Houches, Session LIII, 1990. Elsevier, 1992. Four pages course notes on Inelastic and Elastic Collisions (WK) (PDF)
13	5.4.4. Elastic Collisions between Cold Atoms 5.4.5. s-wave Scattering 6. Master Equation	Metcalf, Harold. "Peter Van Der Straten, Cooling and Tapping of Neutral Atoms." Physics Reports 244, no. 203 (1994). Chuang, Isaac. The Master Equation (PDF) Cohen-Tannoudji, Claude, Jaques Dupont-Roc, and Gilbert Grynberg. Atom-Photon-Interactions, Basic Processes and Applications. New York, NY: Wiley-Interscience, 1998, chapter IV. ISBN: 9780471293361. Weissbluth, Mitchel. Photon Atom Interactions. Boston, MA: Academic Press Inc., 1989, pp. 287-297. ISBN: 9780127436609.
14	7. Optical Bloch Equations 7.1. Derivation 7.2. Rotating-wave Approximation	Cohen-Tannoudji, Claude, Jaques Dupont-Roc, and Gilbert Grynberg. Atom-Photon-Interactions, Basic Processes and Applications. New York, NY: Wiley-Interscience, 1998, chapter V. ISBN: 9780471293361.
15	7.3. Adiabatic Elimination of Coherences 7.4. Steady-state Solution 7.5. Spectrum of Emitted Light
16	7.6. Mean Radiation Forces 7.6.1. Radiation Pressure Force 7.6.2. Reactive Force 7.7. Moving Atoms, Friction Force	Cohen-Tannoudji, Claude, Jaques Dupont-Roc, and Gilbert Grynberg. Atom-Photon-Interactions, Basic Processes and Applications. New York, NY: Wiley-Interscience, 1998, pp. 370-379. ISBN: 9780471293361. Cohen-Tannoudji, C. Fundamental Systems in Quantum Optics, pp. 34-35. Edited by J. Dalibard, J. M. Raimond, and J. Zinn-Justin. Proceeding of the Summer School in Les Houches, Session LIII, 1990. Elsevier, 1992. Gordon, J. P., and A. Ashkin, PRA 21, no. 1606 (1980).
17	7.8. Diffusion in a Standing Wave 7.9. Experiments on the Stimulated Light Force 8. The Dressed Atom Approach 8.1. Derivation of the Energy Levels of the Dressed Atom	Cohen-Tannoudji, Claude, Fundamental Systems in Quantum Optics, pp. 46-53. Edited by J. Dalibard, J. M. Raimond, and J. Zinn-Justin. Proceeding of the Summer School in Les Houches, Session LIII, 1990. Elsevier, 1992. Gordon, J. P., and A. Ashkin, PRA 21, no. 1606 (1980). Cooling Atoms with Stimulated Emission: Aspect, A., J. Dalibard, A. Heidmann, C. Salomon, and Claude Cohen-Tannoudji. "Cooling Atoms with Stimulated Emission." Phys Rev Lett. 57, no. 14 (Oct 6, 1986): 1688-1691. Channeling Atoms: Salomon, C., J. Dalibard, A. Aspect, H. Metcalf, and Claude Cohen-Tannoudji. "Channeling Atoms in a Laser Standing Wave." Phys Rev Lett. 59, no. 15 (Oct 12, 1987): 1659-1662. Localization of Atoms: Jessen P. S., C. Gerz, P. D. Lett, W. D. Phillips, S. L. Rolston, R. J. Spreeuw, and C. I. Westbrook. "Observation of Quantized Motion of Rb Atoms in an Optical Field." Phys Rev Lett. 69, no. 1 (Jul 6, 1992): 49-52. Motion of Wave Packets in Optical Lattices: Raithel, G., W. D. Phillips, and S. L. Rolston. "Collapse and Revivals of Wave Packets in Optical Lattices." Physical Review Letters 81, no. 17 (Oct 26, 1998). First Optical Trap: Chu S., J. E. Bjorkholm, A. Ashkin, and A. Cable. "Experimental Observation of Optically Trapped Atoms." Phys Rev Lett. 57, no. 3 (Jul 21, 1986): 314-317. Far-off-resonance Trap: Miller J. D., R. A. Cline, and D. J. Heinzen. "Far-off-resonance Optical Trapping of Atoms." Phys Rev A 47, no. 6 (June 1993): R4567-R4570. Cohen-Tannoudji, Claude, Jaques Dupont-Roc, and Gilbert Grynberg. Atom-Photon-Interactions, Basic Processes and Applications. New York, NY: Wiley-Interscience, 1998. ISBN: 9780471293361. Chapter VI - worth reading!
18	8.2. Resonance Fluorescence in the Dressed Atom Picture 8.3. Dipole Forces within the Dressed Atom Picture 8.3.1. Mean Dipole Force for an Atom at Rest 8.3.2. Mean Dipole Force for a Slowly Moving Atom 8.3.3. Energy Balance in a Small Displacement	Lecture notes (PDF) Dalibard, J., and Claude Cohen-Tannoudji. "Dressed-atom Approach to Atomic Motion in Laser Light: The Dipole Force Revisited." J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 2, no. 1707 (1985).
19	8.3.4. Momentum Diffusion due to Dipole Force Fluctuations 8.3.5. Atoms Moving in a Standing Wave 8.3.6. Cooling in a Standing Wave 9. Spontaneous Light Force Traps	Magneto-optical Trap, Optical Earnshaw Theorem: pp. 316-335 of the paper which was already used in lecture 1 (Nice summary on both dipole traps and radiation pressure traps) Phillips, W. D. "Laser Cooling and Trapping of Neutral Atoms." In Laser Manipulation of Atoms and Ions. Edited by E. Arimondo, W. D. Phillips, and F. Strumia. Proceedings of the International School of Physics "Enrico Fermi", Course CXVIII. Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1992. Optical Earnshaw Theorem (OET): Ashkin, A., and J. P. Gordon. "Stability of Radiation-pressure Particle Traps: An Optical Earnshaw Theorem." Optics Letters 8, no. 10 (October 1983): 511-513. How to Circumvent the OET: Pritchard, D. E., E. L. Raab, and V. Bagnato. "Light Traps Using Spontaneous Forces." Physical Review Letters 57, no. 3 (July 21, 1986): 310-313. Realization of the MOT: Raab, E. L., M. Prentiss, Alex Cable, Steven Chu, and D. E. Pritchard. "Light Traps Using Spontaneous Forces." Physical Review Letters 59, no. 23 (Dec 7, 1987): 2631-2634.
20	10. Quantum Monte Carlo Wavefunction Method 10.1. Basic Concepts 10.2. MCWF Procedure	Dalibard, J., Y. Castin, and K. Molmer. "Wave-Function Approach to Dissipative Processes in Quantum Optics." Phys. Rev. Lett. 68, no. 580 (1992).
21	10.3. Proof of Equivalence to the Optical Bloch Equations 11. Models of Decoherence 11.1. Decoherence - Definition and Perspective 11.2. Three Models of Phase Damping 11.2.1. Random Phase Noise 11.2.2. Elastic Collisions 11.2.3. Random Phase Flips 11.3. Jaynes-Cummings Collapses and Revivals	Lecture notes Models of Decoherence (PDF)
22	12. Ion Traps 12.1. Hamiltonians and Cooling 12.1.1. The Ion Trap Physical System 12.1.2. The Hamiltonian 12.1.3. Sideband Cooling - Process and Limits 12.1.4. Experimental Observations of Sideband Cooling	Blatt, "Lecture notes on Ion Trapping" in Fundamental Systems in Quantum Optics, Edited by J. Dalibard, J. M. Raimond, and J. Zinn-Justin. Proceeding of the Summer School in Les Houches, Session LIII, 1990. Elsevier, 1992. Sideband Cooling: Dietrich, F., J. C. Bergquist, Wayne M. Itano, and D. J. Wineland. "Laser Cooling to Zero-Point Energy of Motion." Ph. Rev. Let. 62, no. 4 (Jan 23, 1989): 403-406. Laser Cooling of Ions: Eschner, Jurgen, Giovanna Morigi, Ferdinand Schmidt-Kaler, and Rainer Blatt. "Laser Cooling of Trapped Ions." J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 20, no. 5 (May 2003): 1003-1015. Review paper.
23	12.2. Quantum Control of Single Ions 12.2.1. The Challenge of Quantum State Preparation 12.2.2. Review of Unusual States 12.2.3. Motional State Control in Ion Traps 12.2.4. Motional Fock, Coherent, and Schroedinger Cat States 12.2.5. Recipe for Arbitrary Motional States	Leibfried, D., R. Blatt, C. Monroe, and D. Wineland. "Quantum Dynamics of Single Trapped Ions." Review of Modern Physics 75 (January 2003): 281-324.
24	12.3. Quantum Computation with Trapped Ions 12.3.1. Quantum Gates and Circuits 12.3.2. The Cirac-Zoller CNOT 12.3.3. Geometric Phase Gate	Three original papers on Quantum Gates: Monroe, C., D. M. Meekhof, B. E. King, W. M. Itano, and D. J. Wineland. "Demonstration of a Fundamental Quantum Logic Gate." Phys. Rev. Lett. 75, no. 25 (Dec 18, 1995): 4714-4717. Schmidt-Kaler, Ferdinand, Hartmut Häffner, Mark Riebe, Stephan Gulde, Gavin P. T. Lancaster, Thomas Deuschle, Christoph Becher, Christian F. Roos, Jürgen Eschner, and Rainer Blatt. "Realization of the Cirac-Zoller Controlled-NOT Quantum Gate." Nature 422 (March 27, 2003): 408-411. Leibfried, D., B. DeMarco, V. Meyer, D. Lucas, M. Barrett, J. Britton, W. M. Itano, B. Jelenkovic, C. Langer, T. Rosenband, and D. J. Wineland. "Experimental Demonstration of a Robust, High-fidelity Geometric Two Ion-qubit Phase Gate." Nature 422 (March 27, 2003): 412-415.
25	13. Magnetic Traps and Evaporative Cooling 13.1. Stability, Majorana Flops, Magnetic Levitation 13.2. Wing's Theorem 13.3. Magnetic Trap Configurations	W. K., D. S. Durfee, and D. M. Stamper-Kurn. Varenna Lecture Notes, 1999, pp. 80-89.
26	13.4. Evaporative Cooling 14. Bose-Einstein Condensation 14.1. Homogeneous Interacting Bose Gas, Bogoliubov Solution 14.2. Elementary Excitations	Ketterle, W., and N. J. van Druten. "Evaporative Cooling of Trapped Atoms." Adv. At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 37 (1986): 181-236. Relevant pages: pp. 181-193. Pethick, C. J., and H. Smith. Bose-Einstein Condensation in Dilute Gases. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. 205-214 and some selected pages. ISBN: 9780521665803.
27	14.3. Inhomogeneous Bose Gas, Nonlinear Schrödinger Equation 14.4. The Thomas-Fermi Approximation 14.5. Hydrodynamic Flow of a Superfluid	Pethick, C. J., and H. Smith. Bose-Einstein Condensation in Dilute Gases. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. 146-156, 165-179. ISBN: 9780521665803.

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