Physics 430 & 631
Fall 2025

Quantum Optics and Atomics 

Course Materials:

• Week 0: 8/28                     Intro to Atomic Physics and Quantum Optics
  Syllabus
  
  Thursday, August 28 Overheads -- Introductory lecture
  Lecture 1, Thursday, August 28 Review of basics, semi-classical atom, Dipole radiation.
  
  Problem Set 1, due date: September 4 (typo fixed)
  
  
  
• Week 1: 9/2-4                     Coherence
  Lecture 2, Tuesday, September 2 Semi-classical atom, radiative damping, Rayleigh scattering, coherence.
  
  Lecture 3, Thursday, September 4 Michelson interferometer, coherence length & time, 1st order coherence.
  
  Problem Set 2, due date: September 11
  
  
  
• Week 2: 9/9-11                     1st and 2nd Order Coherence
  Lecture 4, Tuesday, September 9 Wiener-Khintchine theorem, 2nd order correlation function.
  Tuesday, September 9 Overheads 1st order coherence, pulsed lasers, 2nd order coherence, bunching.
  
  Lecture 5, Thursday, September 11 2nd order correlation function, 2-level atom, Bloch sphere, time evolution.
  Thursday, September 11 Overheads 2nd order correlation function applications, bunching, anti-bunching.
  
  Problem Set 3, due date: September 18
  
  
  
• Week 3: 9/16-18                     2-Level Atom Interacting with an EM Field
  Lecture 6, Tuesday, September 16 2-level atom with an EM field, rotating wave approx., Rabi flopping.
  Tuesday, September 16 Overheads 2-level and 5-level Rabi flopping examples.
  
  Lecture 7, Thursday, September 18 Energy level shift, avoided crossing, Landau-Zener, dressed atom picture.
  
  
  
• Week 4: 9/23-25                     Dressed Atom Theory
  Lecture 8, Tuesday, September 23 Dressed atom Hamiltonian, AC Stark shift, dressed states.
  Tuesday, September 23 Overheads Optical dipole traps, optical tweezers, Mollow triplet.
  
  Lecture 9, Thursday, September 25 Bloch sphere for the dressed atom.
  
  Problem Set 4, due date: October 2
  
  
  
• Week 5: 9/30-10/2                     Spontaneous Emission
  Lecture 10, Tuesday, September 30 Ramsey interferometer on Bloch sphere, spontaneous emission.
  Tuesday, September 30 Overheads Ramsey interferometry, atomic clock.
  
  Lecture 11, Thursday, October 2 Spontaneous emission, decoherence, density matrix.
  
  Midterm test on Tuesday, October 14
  
  
• Week 6: 10/7                     Optical Bloch Equations
  Lecture 12, Tuesday, October 7 Density matrix, optical Bloch equations, resonance fluorescence, Beer's law.
  Tuesday, October 7 Overheads Fluorescence and absorption imaging.
  
  
  
• Week 7: 10/14-16                     Midterm & Quantum Trajectories
  
  Midterm test on Tuesday, October 14