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Degree Of Coherence
In quantum optics, correlation functions are used to characterize the statistical and coherence properties of an electromagnetic field. The degree of coherence is the normalized correlation of electric fields; in its simplest form, termed g^. It is useful for quantifying the coherence between two electric fields, as measured in a Michelson or other linear optical interferometer. The correlation between pairs of fields, g^, typically is used to find the statistical character of intensity fluctuations. First order correlation is actually the amplitude-amplitude correlation and the second order correlation is the intensity-intensity correlation. It is also used to differentiate between states of light that require a quantum mechanical description and those for which classical fields are sufficient. Analogous considerations apply to any Bose field in subatomic physics, in particular to mesons (cf. Bose–Einstein correlations). Degree of first-order coherence The normalized ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quantum Optics
Quantum optics is a branch of atomic, molecular, and optical physics dealing with how individual quanta of light, known as photons, interact with atoms and molecules. It includes the study of the particle-like properties of photons. Photons have been used to test many of the counter-intuitive predictions of quantum mechanics, such as entanglement and teleportation, and are a useful resource for quantum information processing. History Light propagating in a restricted volume of space has its energy and momentum quantized according to an integer number of particles known as photons. Quantum optics studies the nature and effects of light as quantized photons. The first major development leading to that understanding was the correct modeling of the blackbody radiation spectrum by Max Planck in 1899 under the hypothesis of light being emitted in discrete units of energy. The photoelectric effect was further evidence of this quantization as explained by Albert Einstein in a 1905 paper ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Photon Antibunching
Photon antibunching generally refers to a light field with photons more equally spaced than a coherent laser field, a signature being signals at appropriate detectors which are anticorrelated. More specifically, it can refer to sub-Poissonian photon statistics, that is a photon number distribution for which the variance is less than the mean. A coherent state, as output by a laser far above threshold, has Poissonian statistics yielding random photon spacing; while a thermal light field has super-Poissonian statistics and yields bunched photon spacing. In the thermal (bunched) case, the number of fluctuations is larger than a coherent state; for an antibunched source they are smaller. Explanation The variance of the photon number distribution is : V_n=\langle \Delta n^2\rangle=\langle n^2\rangle-\langle n\rangle^2= \left\langle \left(a^a\right)^2\right\rangle-\langle a^a\rangle ^2. Using commutation relations, this can be written as : V_n=\langle )^2a^2 \rangle+\langle ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Van Cittert–Zernike Theorem
The van Cittert–Zernike theorem, named after physicists Pieter Hendrik van Cittert and Frits Zernike, is a formula in coherence theory that states that under certain conditions the Fourier transform of the intensity distribution function of a distant, incoherent source is equal to its complex visibility. This implies that the wavefront from an incoherent source will appear mostly coherent at large distances. Intuitively, this can be understood by considering the wavefronts created by two incoherent sources. If we measure the wavefront immediately in front of one of the sources, our measurement will be dominated by the nearby source. If we make the same measurement far from the sources, our measurement will no longer be dominated by a single source; both sources will contribute almost equally to the wavefront at large distances. This reasoning can be easily visualized by dropping two stones in the center of a calm pond. Near the center of the pond, the disturbance created b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Orders Of Coherence
Coherence is defined as the ability of waves to interfere. Intuitively, coherent waves have a well-defined constant phase relationship. However, an exclusive and extensive physical definition of coherence is more nuanced. Coherence functions, as introduced by Roy Glauber and others in the 1960s, capture the mathematics behind the intuition by defining correlation between the electric field components as coherence. These correlations between electric field components can be measured to arbitrary orders, hence leading to the concept of different orders of coherence. The coherence encountered in most optical experiments, including the classic Young's double slit experiment and Mach-Zehnder interferometer, is first order coherence. Robert Hanbury Brown and Richard Q. Twiss performed a correlation experiment in 1956, and brought to light a different kind of correlation between fields, namely the correlation of intensities, which correspond to second order coherence. Higher order coherenc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Optical Autocorrelation
In optics, various autocorrelation functions can be experimentally realized. The field autocorrelation may be used to calculate the spectrum of a source of light, while the intensity autocorrelation and the interferometric autocorrelation are commonly used to ''estimate'' the duration of ultrashort pulses produced by modelocked lasers. The laser pulse duration cannot be easily measured by optoelectronic methods, since the response time of photodiodes and oscilloscopes are at best of the order of 200 femtoseconds, yet laser pulses can be made as short as a few femtoseconds. In the following examples, the autocorrelation signal is generated by the nonlinear process of second-harmonic generation (SHG). Other techniques based on two-photon absorption may also be used in autocorrelation measurements, as well as higher-order nonlinear optical processes such as third-harmonic generation, in which case the mathematical expressions of the signal will be slightly modified, but the basi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Normally Distributed And Uncorrelated Does Not Imply Independent
In probability theory, although simple examples illustrate that linear uncorrelatedness of two random variables does not in general imply their independence, it is sometimes mistakenly thought that it does imply that when the two random variables are normally distributed. This article demonstrates that assumption of normal distributions does not have that consequence, although the multivariate normal distribution, including the bivariate normal distribution, does. To say that the pair (X,Y) of random variables has a bivariate normal distribution means that every linear combination aX+bY of X and Y for constant (i.e. not random) coefficients a and b (not both equal to zero) has a univariate normal distribution. In that case, if X and Y are uncorrelated then they are independent. However, it is possible for two random variables X and Y to be so distributed jointly that each one alone is marginally normally distributed, and they are uncorrelated, but they are not independent; example ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fourier Transform Spectroscopy
Fourier-transform spectroscopy is a measurement technique whereby spectra are collected based on measurements of the coherence of a radiative source, using time-domain or space-domain measurements of the radiation, electromagnetic or not. It can be applied to a variety of types of ''spectroscopy'' including optical spectroscopy, infrared spectroscopy ( FTIR, FT-NIRS), nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging (MRSI), mass spectrometry and electron spin resonance spectroscopy. There are several methods for measuring the temporal coherence of the light (see: field-autocorrelation), including the continuous-wave and the pulsed Fourier-transform spectrometer or Fourier-transform spectrograph. The term "Fourier-transform spectroscopy" reflects the fact that in all these techniques, a Fourier transform is required to turn the raw data into the actual spectrum, and in many of the cases in optics involving interferometers, is based on the Wiener– ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Correlation And Dependence
In statistics, correlation or dependence is any statistical relationship, whether causal or not, between two random variables or bivariate data. Although in the broadest sense, "correlation" may indicate any type of association, in statistics it usually refers to the degree to which a pair of variables are ''linearly'' related. Familiar examples of dependent phenomena include the correlation between the height of parents and their offspring, and the correlation between the price of a good and the quantity the consumers are willing to purchase, as it is depicted in the so-called demand curve. Correlations are useful because they can indicate a predictive relationship that can be exploited in practice. For example, an electrical utility may produce less power on a mild day based on the correlation between electricity demand and weather. In this example, there is a causal relationship, because extreme weather causes people to use more electricity for heating or cooling. However ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Coherence Theory (optics)
In physics, coherence theory is the study of optical effects arising from partially coherent light and radio sources. Partially coherent sources are sources where the coherence time or coherence length are limited by bandwidth, by thermal noise, or by other effect. Many aspects of modern coherence theory are studied in quantum optics. The theory of partial coherence was awoken in the 1930s due to work by Pieter Hendrik van Cittert and Frits Zernike. Topics in coherence theory * Visibility * Mutual coherence function * Degree of coherence * Self coherence function * Coherence function * Low frequency fluctuations * General interference law * Van Cittert–Zernike theorem * Michelson stellar interferometer * Correlation interferometry * Hanbury–Brown and Twiss effect * Phase-contrast microscope * Pseudothermal light * Englert–Greenberger duality relation * Coherence Collapse See also * Nonclassical light * Optical coherence tomography References * Eugene Hecht Eugene ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Photon Bunching
In physics, the Hanbury Brown and Twiss (HBT) effect is any of a variety of correlation and anti-correlation effects in the intensities received by two detectors from a beam of particles. HBT effects can generally be attributed to the wave–particle duality of the beam, and the results of a given experiment depend on whether the beam is composed of fermions or bosons. Devices which use the effect are commonly called intensity interferometers and were originally used in astronomy, although they are also heavily used in the field of quantum optics. History In 1954, Robert Hanbury Brown and Richard Q. Twiss introduced the intensity interferometer concept to radio astronomy for measuring the tiny angular size of stars, suggesting that it might work with visible light as well. Soon after they successfully tested that suggestion: in 1956 they published an in-lab experimental mockup using blue light from a mercury-vapor lamp, and later in the same year, they applied this technique to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Q-number
In quantum physics and chemistry, quantum numbers describe values of conserved quantities in the dynamics of a quantum system. Quantum numbers correspond to eigenvalues of operators that commute with the Hamiltonian—quantities that can be known with precision at the same time as the system's energyspecifically, observables \widehat that commute with the Hamiltonian are simultaneously diagonalizable with it and so the eigenvalues a and the energy (eigenvalues of the Hamiltonian) are not limited by an uncertainty relation arising from non-commutativity.—and their corresponding eigenspaces. Together, a specification of all of the quantum numbers of a quantum system fully characterize a basis state of the system, and can in principle be measured together. An important aspect of quantum mechanics is the quantization of many observable quantities of interest.Many observables have discrete spectra (sets of eigenvalues) in quantum mechanics, so the quantities can only be measure ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
