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Light is made up of particles and hence inherently "grainy"; quantum optics is the study of the nature and effects of this. The fundamental ideas of quantum optics, namely Albert Einstein's 1905 theory of the photoelectric effect and all the understanding of the interaction between light and matter following from it not only form the basis of quantum optics but also here crucial for the development of quantum mechanics as a whole.
However, the subfields of quantum mechanics dealing with matter-light interaction were principally regarded as research in matter rather than in light and hence, one rather spoke of atom physics and quantum electronics.
This changed with the invention of the laser in 1950. Laser science, i. e. research into principles, design and application of these devices became an important field, and the quantum mechanics underlying the laser's principles was studied now with more emphasis on the properties of light, and the name quantum optics became customary.
As laser science needed good theoretical foundations, and also because research into these soon proved very fruitful, interest in quantum optics rose. A clearer understanding of the statistics of light was gained, with the introduction of the concepts of coherent states, squeezed light etc. being the successes of the 1970s and 1980sMillennia: 1st millennium 2nd millennium 3rd millennium Centuries: 19th century 20th century 21st century Decades: 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 2020s 2030s Years: 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 Events and trends, as well as the development of short and ultrashort laserModelocking is a technique in optics by which a laser can be made to produce pulses of light of extremely short duration, on the order of picoseconds ( 10-12s) or femtoseconds ( 10-15s). The basis of the technique is to induce a fixed phase relationship b pulses, opening the way to the study of unimaginably fast processes (see femtosecond physics ). Application for solid state reasearch (e.g. Raman spectroscopyRaman spectroscopy is a spectroscopic technique used in condensed matter physics and chemistry to study vibrational, rotational, and other low-frequency modes in a system. It relies on inelastic scattering, or Raman scattering of monochromatic light, usua) were found, interferometers were studied and mechanical forces of light on matter. The latter allow for levitating clouds of atoms or even small biological samples in a laser beam ( optical trap ) and for moving them around ( optical tweezersOptical tweezers are the application of a laser beam to physically move very small translucent objects. A laser beam nominally has a power density cross-section which is Gaussian, so there is more power in the middle of the beam and less at the edges.). This, along with Doppler cooling was the crucial technology needed to achieve the celebrated Bose-Einstein condensation.
Other remarkable results are the demonstration of quantum entanglementQuantum entanglement is a quantum mechanical phenomenon in which the quantum states of two or more objects have to be described with reference to each other, even though the individual objects may be spatially separated. This leads to correlations between, quantum teleportation and (recently, in 2004) quantum logic gates. The latter are of much interest in quantum information theory, a subject which partly emerged from quantum optics, partly from theoretical computer science.
Today's fields of interest among quantum optics researchers include parametric down-conversion, parametric oscillation , even shorter ( attosecond) light pulses, use of quantum optics for quantum information, manipulation of single atoms, Bose-Einstein condensates, their application, and how to manipulate them (a sub-field often called atom optics ), and much more.
Research into quantum optics, which aims to bring photons to use for information transfer and computation, is now often called photonics to emphasize the claim that photons and photonics will take the role that electrons and electronics now have.
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