The Physics of Quantum Electronics A Series of Lecture Notes Volume II

QC 351 A7 no. 31 v2The quantum theory of noise plays a very important role in the laser and optical parametric oscillator. In these lectures we shall consider in some detail a damped harmonic oscillator as well as a rotating-wave van der Pol oscillator which describes a laser. We begin with a brief reivew of the quantization of the radiation field and the coherent state representation.1,2 This representation is especially appropriate for oscillators far above threshold since it shows the very close correspondence between the quantum and classical theory. The theory of damping will be presented from both the Langevin and reduced density operator viewpoints. When the system is a mode of the radiation field, the density operator in the coherent state representation is a Fokker-Planck type equation. We shall present an elementary discussion of the optical parametric oscillator.This title from the Optical Sciences Technical Reports collection is made available by the College of Optical Sciences and the University Libraries, The University of Arizona. If you have questions about titles in this collection, please contact repository@u.library.arizona.edu