Atomic and Optical Physics
This course provides the foundations for contemporary research in selected areas of atomic and optical physics, including the quantum-mechanical behavior of atoms and photons, and how these properties may relate to quantum information processing.
Course Information
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About this Course
This is the first of a two-semester subject sequence that provides the foundations for contemporary research in selected areas of atomic and optical physics, including the quantum-mechanical behavior of atoms and photons, and how these properties may relate to quantum information processing.
Topics covered include the interaction of radiation with atoms: resonance; absorption, stimulated and spontaneous emission; methods of resonance, dressed atom formalism, masers and lasers, cavity quantum electrodynamics; structure of simple atoms, behavior in very strong fields; fundamental tests: time reversal, parity violations, Bell’s inequalities; and experimental methods.
What you'll learn
- How atoms interact with radiation
- The concept and methods of resonance
- The structure of simple atoms
- The behavior of atoms in cavities
- Simple quantum information concepts arising in atomic physics
Prerequisites
Undergraduate physics, including quantum mechanics, calculus, and linear algebra
Meet your instructors
Wolfgang Ketterle
John D. MacArthur Professor of Physics at MIT
Wolfgang Ketterle has been the John D. MacArthur Professor of Physics at MIT since 1998. He received a diploma (equivalent to master’s degree) from the Technical University of Munich (1982), and the Ph.D. in physics from the University of Munich (1986). He did postdoctoral work at the Max-Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Garching and at the University of Heidelberg in molecular spectroscopy and combustion diagnostics. In 1990, he came to MIT as a postdoc and joined the physics faculty in 1993. Since 2006, he is the director of the Center of Ultracold Atoms, an NSF funded research center, and Associate Director of the Research Laboratory of Electronics. His research group studies properties of ultracold atomic matter.
For additional biographical information on Professor Ketterle, see his autobiography written for the Nobel Foundation.
