Tagged Questions
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Physical significance of effective wave function
In Yanhua Shih's book on quantum optics, the coherence functions are expressed in terms of effective wave function. Here are the expressions for single photon wave packets.
To derive the coherence ...
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0answers
39 views
Photon detection rate for pure / mixed states coming from single mode point source
Let the pure states be in superposition of horizontal and vertically polarized basis states. They are arriving at the point detector one at a time. So, a pure state is $|\Psi\rangle = \alpha|V\rangle ...
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1answer
76 views
How can the 5-photon absorption coefficient be estimated?
Imagine a large bandgap material which is irradiated by an intense laser beam.
If the photon energy is only high enough for 1/5 of the bandgap, is there a way to approximate the absorption by 5-photon ...
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0answers
103 views
Polarization photon and Stokes parameters
I have the following situation: About the polarization of the photon, I introduce the basis:
Horizontal polarization $|\leftrightarrow>=\binom{1}{0}$
Vertical polarization ...
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2answers
182 views
Optical Tunneling
Is there light tunneling taking place in optically transparent mediums like glass? wherein light travels a larger path in these mediums without interacting with atoms and without any change in ...
1
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1answer
155 views
Quantum Cryptography
First question was a little bit ambiguous.
Photons are passed through a linear polarizer that is oriented $\theta$ degrees again the photon passes through another linear polarizer that also have a ...
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1answer
429 views
What are the polarization states of the photons in a polarized and unpolarized light?
The photons are completely polarized, i.e their polarization states can be expressed as $a|R\rangle+b|L\rangle$, where $|R\rangle$ and $|L\rangle$ are two helicity eigenstates of the photon. For ...
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5answers
2k views
Does a photon interfere only with itself?
I sometimes hear statements like that:
Quantum-mechanically, interference pattern occurs due to quantum interference of wavefunction of a photon. Wavefunction of a single photon only interferes ...
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2answers
824 views
How to count photons
How are photons counted?
What is the experimental setup used to count photons from a laser or even a lamp? Of course, in the case of the lamp, I would be able to count only the photons that pass ...
