Fundamentals Of Quantum Optics And Quantum Information : An Introduction

Another book on Quantum Optics? or Quantum Information? Well, not - actly. A more descriptive title might be: “A guided tour through basic qu- tum mechanics, quantum optics and quantum information”. Even better, a few words on its origin and our motivation for undertaking the task might be useful to the potential reader in deciding whether to turn the pages beyond this preface. For more than ten years now, a graduate course on quantum optics has been taught in the physics department of the University of Crete. Spanning two semesters, it originally consisted of a collection of topics representative of what can be found in the numerous by now excellent books on quantum optics. Over the last four years or so,however, the course acquired a gradually increasing segment of what is broadly referred to as quantum information, whichatthispointisapproximatelyhalfofthematerial.Inevitably,thetopics on standard quantum optics had to be reduced or compressed accordingly.

Peter Lambropoulos, at present Professor of Physics at the University of Crete, received his PhD in 1965 from the University of Michigan (USA). Since then he has been visiting fellow at JILA, Univ. of Colorado (USA), has served as chair of the physics department at the University of Southern California, Head of the Theory group at the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Garching as well as director of the Institute of Electronic Structure and Lasers in Crete. The research in his groups over the last 25 years has spanned a broad area of laser physics, such as multiphoton and strong field processes, coherent control, cavity QED, quantum optics in photonic bandgap materials, with recent involvement in the theory of atom lasers and quantum dots. He is author or coauthor of about 250 papers as well as numerous chapters in volumes dealing with the above subfields. P. Lambropoulos is Fellow of the American Physical Society, Chair of the Board EGAS (European Group on Atomic Spectroscopy) of EPS.

David Petrosyan received his PhD in 1999 from the Institute for Physical Research, ANAS (Armenia). Since then he has been postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Electronic Structure and Lasers (IESL) in Crete, Feinberg postdoctoral fellow at the Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel) and since 2002 is a member of the IESL. His research interests are centered around theoretical Laser Physics and Quantum Optics, such as coherent effects in multi-level atomic systems and cavity QED, as well as physical implementations of quantum computation and quantum communication schemes.