ABSTRACT

We will begin our journey through the background of quantum

optics with an elementary, but quantitative, classical theory of

radiative fields.Wewill first briefly outline the electromagnetic (EM)

theory of radiation, and describe how the EM radiation may be

understood as a wavewhich can be represented by a set of harmonic

oscillators. We shall describe how the free or non-interacting EM

field may be understood as a collection of harmonic oscillators

which is quantized in the standard manner, and whose energy

cannot be zero as a consequence of the basic non-commutability of

the canonical field variables. This chapter discusses the properties

of plane EM waves and normalization of the EM field in one

dimension. This is followed by a description of the Hamiltonian

and the amplitudes of the EM field in terms of the annihilation

and creation operators. Based on this chapter, it is possible to

considerably simplify the formulation of the physical basis for the

mathematical description of the major problems of quantum optics.