本书介绍了一些与激光有关的现象，这些现象是科学家和工程师进行量子光学和激光物理研究的基础。主要内容包括：电磁场的量子化，相干性的量子理论，原子与场的相互作用模型，共振发光，量子阻尼理论，运用了主方程和朗之万方法的激光理论，激光的相关发射，输入-输出理论及其在非线性光学中的应用，量子轨道，原子光学，量子非破坏性测量及保罗阱中离子非经典振动态的产生。本书概念清晰，利于教学，在光学现象的介绍中，兼顾理论和最新的相关实验。

本书是《国外物理名著系列》之一。本书几乎涉及了近代物理学中量子光学的所有领域，既有阐述学科基本理论的经典名著，也有反映某一学科专题前沿的专著。基础理论方面强调“经典”，选择了那些经得起时间检验、对物理学的发展产生重要影响、现在还不“过时”的著作；反映物理学某一领域进展的方面强调“前沿”和“热点”，根据国内物理学研究发展的实际情况，选择了能够体现相关学科最新进展，对有关方向的科研人员和研究生有重要参考价值的图书。本书还对部分目录标题和练习题进行了少量的翻译和注释，以方便国内读者的阅读和理解。

1、Einstein's Theory of Atom-Radiation Interaction

 1.1 The A and B Coefficients

 1.2 Thermal Equilibrium

 1.3 Photon Distribution and Fluctuations

 1.4 Light Beam Incident on Atoms

 1.5 Elementary Laser Theory

1.5.1 Threshold and Population Inversion

1.5.2 Steady State

1.5.3 Linear Stability Analysis

 Problems

2、Atom-Field Interaction:Semiclassical Approach

 2.1 Broad-Band Radiation Spectrum

 2.2 Rabi Oscillations

 2.3 Bloch's Equations

 2.4 Decay to an Unobserved Level

 2.5 Decay Between Levels

 2.6 Optical Nutation

 Problems

3、Quantization of the Electromagnetic Field

 3.1 Fock States

 3.2 Density of Modes

 3.3 Commutation Relations

 Problems

4、States of the Electromagnetic Field Ⅰ

 4.1 Further Properties

4.1.1 Coherent States are Minimum Uncertainty States

4.1.2 Coherent States are not Orthogonal

4.1.3 Coherent States are Overcomplete

4.1.4 The Displacement Operator

4.1.5 Photon Statistics

4.1.6 Coordinate Representation

 4.2 Mixed State.Thermal Radiation

 Problems

5、States of the Electromagnetic Field Ⅱ

 5.1 Squeezed States.General Properties and Detection

5.1.1 The Squeeze Operator and the Squeezed State

5.1.2 The Squeezed State is an Eigenstate of A

5.1.3 Calculation of Moments with Squeezed States

5.1.4 Quadrature Fluctuations

5.1.5 Photon Statistics

 5.2 Multimode Squeezed States

 5.3 Detection of Squeezed States

5.3.1 Ordinary Homodyne Detection

5.3.2 Balanced Homodyne Detection

5.3.3 Heterodyne Detection

 Problems

6、Quantum Theory of Coherence

 6.1 One-Atom Detector

 6.2 The n-Atom Detector

 6.3 General Properties of the Correlation Functions

 6.4 Young's Interference and First-Order Correlation

 6.5 Second-Order Correlations.Photon Bunching and Antibunching

6.5.1 Classical Second-Order Coherence

6.5.2 Quantum Theory of Second-Order Coherence

 6.6 Photon Counting

6.6.1 Some Simple Examples

6.6.2 Quantum Mechanical Photon Count Distribution

6.6.3 Particular Examples

 Problems

7、Phase Space Description

 7.1 Q-Representation.Antinormal Ordering

7.1.1 Normalization

7.1.2 Average of Antinormally Ordered Products

7.1.3 Some Examples

7.1.4 The Density Operator in Terms of the Function Q

 7.2 Characteristic Function

 7.3 P-Representation:Normal Ordering

7.3.1 Normalization

7.3.2 Averages of Normally Ordered Products

7.3.3 Some Interesting Properties

7.3.4 Some Examples

 7.4 The Wigner Distribution:Symmetric Ordering

 ……

8、Atom-Field Interaction

9、System-Reservoir Interactions

10、Resonance Fluorescence

11、Quantum Laser Theory.Master Equation Approach

12、Quantum Laser Theory.Langevin Approach

13、Quantum Noise Reduction Ⅰ

14、Quantum Noise Reduction Ⅱ

15、Quantum Phase

16、Quantum Trajectories

17、Atom Optics

18、Measurements,Quantum Limits and all That

19、Trapped Ions

20、Decoherence

Hints for Solutions of Problems

References

Index