Localisation Of Photon States In Quantum Optics

E. R. Pike; Sarben Sarkar

doi:10.1117/12.967178

1 January 1987 Localisation Of Photon States In Quantum Optics

E. R. Pike, Sarben Sarkar

Proceedings Volume 0813, Optics and the Information Age; (1987) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.967178
Event: 14th Congress of the International Commission for Optics, 1987, Quebec, Canada

Abstract

Non-classical light sources are now being developed in more and more laboratories. Their noise reduction properties are potentially important for technology. Examples are squeezed and antibunched light sources. It is tempting to picture in some of these processes single photons flying through space. In non-relativistic quantum mechanics it is easy to discuss the properties of particle localisation in a general context without recourse to a particular experimental configuration. A position operator exists and the localised states are just the eigenstates of this operator. The situation in relativistic quantum mechanics (or field theory) is not as straightforward. The photon is relativistic and it has the addi-tional property of being massless. It has no position operator associated with it. Yet, nevertheless, it is possible to pose the question of finding a generic construction for a wave packet for the photon which is localised as far as possible in some (imaginary) box in space. The difficulty of the construction follows from the fact that in an electromagnetic wave the polarisation is perpendicular to the direction of propagation. Thus we need to construct a vector field which is localised and has this transverse property related to the masslessness of the photon.

Citation Download Citation

E. R. Pike and Sarben Sarkar "Localisation Of Photon States In Quantum Optics", Proc. SPIE 0813, Optics and the Information Age, (1 January 1987); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.967178

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KEYWORDS

Light sources

Photodetectors

Quantum mechanics

Quantum optics

Denoising

Electromagnetic radiation

Image processing

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