Prior to the development of the first lasers in the 1960s, optical coherence was not a subject with which many scientists had much acquaintance, even though early contributions to the field were made by several distinguished physicists, including Max you Lane, Erwin Schrodinger and Frits Zernike. However, the situation changed once it was realized that the remarkable properties of laser light depended on its coherence. An earlier development that also triggered interest in optical coherence was a series of important experiments by Hanbury Brown and Twiss in teh 1950s,showing that, correlations between the fluctuations of mutually coherent beams of thermal light could be measured by photoelectric correlation and two-photon coincidence counting experiments. The interpretation of these experiments was, however, surrounded by controversy, which emphasized the need for understanding the coherence properties of light and their effect on the interaction between light and matter.

Preface

1 Elements of probability theory

　1.1 Definitions

　1.2 Properties of probabilities

　　1.2.1 Joint probabilities

　　1.2.2 Conditional probabilities

　　1.2.3 Bayes'theorem on inverse probabilities

　1.3 Random variables and probability distributions

　　1.3.1 Transformations ofvariates

　　1.3.2 Expectations and moments

　　1.3.3 Chebyshev inequality

　1.4 Generating functions

　　1.4.1 Moment generating function

　　1.4.2 Characteristic function

　　1.4.3 Cumulants

　1.5 Some examples of probability distributions

　　1.5.1 Bernoulli or binomial distributiou

　　1.5.2 Poisson distribution

　　1.5.3 Bose-Einstein distribution

　　1.5.4 The weak law of large numbers

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2 Random processes

3 Some useful mathematical techniques

4 Second-order Coherence theory of scalar wavefields

5 Radiation form sources of any state of coherence

7 Some applications of second-order coherence theory

8 Higher-order correlations in optical fields

9 Semiclassical theory of photoelectric detection of light

10 Quantization of the free electromagnetic field

11 Coherent states of the electromagnetic field

12 Quantum correlations and photon statistics

13 Radiation from thermal equilibrium sources

14 Quantum theory of photoelectric detection of light

15 Interaction between light and a two-level atom

16 Collective atomic interactions

17 Some general techniques for treating interacting systems

18 The single-mode laser

19 The two-mode ring laser

20 Squeezed states of light

22 Some quantum effects in nonlinear optics

References

Author index

Subject index