- Term: Summer 2015
- Course code: QIC895 (Reading course)
- Instructors: Achim Kempf, Eduardo Martin-Martinez, Adrian Lupascu, Thomas Jennewein
- Time: Mondays 10:30am
- Venue: MC6334
- Grades: based on project essay, project seminar, reading material seminar and assignments.
- Office hours: by arrangement
Projects
The course includes project work culminating in an essay of about 10 pages, as well as a short seminar of the project's results at the end of term (after lectures end, in the exam period)
Deadline for handing in the project essay: Sunday, August 16, 11:59pm (via email to all instructors, pdf format)
Student seminars (15min + 5min for questions): Monday, August 17, from 3pm (in MC6334 as usual).
The project proposals are here:
- Projects proposed by Prof. Jennewein
- Projects proposed by Prof. Lupascu
- Project proposed by Prof. Martin-Martinez (updated)
- Project proposed by Prof. Kempf
For more information on a particular project, contact the proposing instructor directly.
Assignments
Send pdf files with the solutions to Profs. A. Kempf and E. Martin-Martinez by the deadline.
- Assignment 1 (due Sun 24 May 11.59pm): Scully's problems 5.1 and 5.2.
- Assignment 2 (due Wed. 3 June, 11:59pm): here
- Assignment 3 (due Wed. 17 June, 11:59pm): here
Student seminars about the reading material
Advice on preparing your seminar about the reading material:
- Best stick closely to covering the assigned reading, i.e., the relevant chapters in the references. Try to cover most of the reading material prescribed for the week leading up to your lecture, if need be only in broad strokes. Try to go by the philosophy that you'd rather have the audience seeing the big picture, i.e., a framework, than just a subset in detail.
- This means that the aim is not to describe as many things as possible. The aim is to explain as many things as possible. That will be far fewer.
- This includes the strategy of less tedious calculation and more in depth explanation. No need for detailed calculations because these are in the reading material - and in any case there would not be enough time to cover them. Of course, if a particular mathematical technique is at the very heart of a crucial argument or concept then that can and should be covered.
- Ideally, your presentation is to help your fellow students understand what's going on a meta level: What are the setups, how are they motivated? What choices are being made, and why? What's the physics or what's the math behind these choices? Given these setups what are the results. What is the intuition, what is the significance. What are the limitations of the setup?
- Just a reminder: Do not assume any terminology because the audience comes from very varied backgrounds, i.e., make sure that all but the most common terminology is defined or at least given a quick reminder.
General advice on writing essays, giving presentations and more.
Here is a little handbook that I (AK) wrote some time ago for new grad students in Applied Mathematics.
Schedule
(Meetings are Mondays 10:30am in MC6334, unless otherwise indicated)
May 11, First meeting
To read in this week: Scully Ch. 5
May 19, 11:30am, Seminar: Semiclassical light-matter interactions (Anton Borissov)
To read in this week: Cappellaro Ch. 10, Scully Ch. 1, Gardiner Ch. 8.1 (over two weeks)
May 25, Seminar: Quantizing the electromagnetic field I (Chris Chamberland)
To read in this week: Cappellaro Ch. 10, Scully Ch. 1, Gardiner Ch. 8.1
June 1, Seminar: Quantizing the electromagnetic field II (Hyeran Kong)
To read in this week: Cappellaro Ch. 12, Scully Ch. 6
June 8, Seminar: Quantum light-matter interactions (David Layden)
To read in this week (optional but recommended):
Lecture notes by EMM on QM
Lecture notes and video by AK on quantized atom - quantized field interaction and Unruh effect.
June 15, Lecture: Relativistic considerations (Prof. Eduardo Martin-Martinez)
To read in this week: Scully Ch. 2, Gardiner Ch. 10
June 22, Seminar: Coherent and squeezed states (Guillaume Verdon-Akzam)
To read in this week: Projects proposed by Prof. Jennewein
June 29, Lecture: Implementations (Prof. Thomas Jennewein)
To read in this week: Cappellaro Ch. 8, Gardiner Ch. 5 (over two weeks)
July 6, Seminar: Open quantum dynamics, Markov processes I (Jason Pye)
To read in this week: Girvin and Schoelkopf, Nature 451, 664-669 (2008)
July 13, Lecture: Quantum optics with superconducting qubits (Prof. Adrian Lupascu)
To read in this week: Cappellaro Ch. 8, Gardiner Ch. 5
July 20, Seminar: Open quantum dynamics, Markov processes II (Sasha Agne)
To read in this week: Scully Ch. 8-9 (over two weeks)
July 27, Seminar: Quantum Damping (Marian Berek)
To read in this week: Scully Ch. 8-9 (over two weeks)
July 28, -- 4pm --, Guest Lecture: Dynamical decoupling in open quantum systems, examples from NV centers. (Prof. Paola Cappellaro, MIT). (This is a Tuesday)
(Lectures & classes end July 28)
Literature
P. Cappellaro, Quantum Theory of Radiation Interactions, MIT Open Courseware, Course 22.51 (2012).
Content
Quantum optics is becoming increasingly important in fields such as quantum computing and quantum cryptography. Not only can the quantum nature of the electromagnetic field be used to encode and transmit quantum information, but it plays an important role in the decoherence of numerous systems. This reading course offers an in-depth treatment of quantum optics and its role in decoherence.
Concretely, this course is planned to be based on the MIT graduate course Quantum Theory of Radiation Interactions, a 12-week course on these subjects offered in 2012 by Prof. Paola Cappellaro. A portion of covers material treated in Phys 434 and Phys 454/AMath 473 (Waterloo), which will be omitted here in order to allow for a more in-depth treatment of the other topics, following the textbooks and, on quantum optics and quantum noise respectively.
The course will use Cappellaro's as a primary reference, as the full course material for it is available online, including complete lecture notes, assignments, and tests. As time permits, References by Scully et al and Gardiner et al will be used to supplement the lecture notes, as per the schedule below.
The material will be divided into 8 blocks, each of which will take 1 to 2 weeks. Blocks 1--5 will introduce the central concepts of quantum optics, including quantization of the electromagnetic field, light-matter interactions, and non-classical states of light. Block 4 will cover relativistic effects in light-matter interactions, for which certain common approximations may not be valid. Blocks 6--7 will apply the material from the first five blocks to study noise and damping in quantum systems. Block 8 will briefly cover implementations of quantum optics, including cavity and circuit QED, with an emphasis on applications to quantum information processing.
Students will be expected to do a project with a written report and present one or several 1-hour seminars on the course material. Depending on the number of students enrolled, a substantial amount of this material may be covered in these seminars, which all students will be expected to attend. Students will complete assignments from Cappellaro's course every 2-3 weeks on average. The numerical grades will based on the project work, seminars and the assignments.