Quantum Optics: Solutions J.

Faist

Series No 01 21/9/2012, hand in 1/10/2012

1. Photon number distribution: thermal light and coherent light a) We have to prove that : n(n 1)(n 2).....(n r + 1) = r! n
r

(1)

we recall the denition of factorial moment of the photon number n(n 1)(n 2)....(n r + 1) = n n(n 1)(n 2)....(n r + 1)Pn For thermal light we have that U = e /kB T and then Pn = (from the summation of a geometrical series where U < 1, substitute Pn in the factorial moment:
Un
n

(2)

Un n n=0 U

= (1 U ) U n 1 = 1U ). We

n(n 1)(n 2).....(n r + 1) = n n(n 1)(n 2)....(n r + 1)(1 U ) U n = = (1 U )n n(n 1)(n 2)....(n r + 1) U n = = (1 U )n (n 1)(n 2)....(n r + 1) nU n = = (1 U )U n (n 1)(n 2)....(n r + 1) nU n1 = n U = = (1 U )U n (n 1)(n 2)....(n r + 1) U = (1 U )U 2 n (n 2)....(n r + 1) ((n 1)U n1 ) = U = (1 U )U 3 n (n 3)....(n r + 1) ((n 1)U n2 ) = U U . . . r1 = (1 U )U r1 n (n r + 1) ( ....... ) ((n 1)U nr+2 ) = U U r r ....... ) ((n 1)U nr+1 ) = = (1 U )U n (n r + 1) ( U U r = (1 U )U r ( ....... ) n U nr+1 = (n r) U U r 1 (1 U )U r = r1U U r+1 r 1 1 (1 U )U r r! = r! = r! n 1U 1U (3) From the denition of variance of a distribution we have that: 2 =
n

(n n )2 Pn = n 1

(4)

Series No 01(suite)

21/9/2012, hand in 1/10/2012

For the Plancks distribution the 2nd factorial moment is : n(n 1) = 2 n 2 n2 n = 2 n 2 2 = n 2 + n

(5)

b) Now we consder a coherent radiation (like laser light ) with a Poissonian statistics: First lets try to calculate n(n 1)

n(n 1) =
n=0

n(n 1)

n n e n n!

(6)

the terms with n=0,1 are zero, so we write: n n e n = n(n 1) n(n 1) = n! n=2

n=2

n n e n (n 2)!

set n-2=m n e (m)!

m n

=
m=0

m+2 n

e (m)!

(7)

= n

2 m=0

we can now consider the Taylor expansion for the exponental function in the form x 2 3 e = 1 + 1! + + + .... = x=0 x! 2! 3! so : n(n 1) = n 2 e n e n = n
2

(8)

2 and then the variance for Poissonian statistics is P oiss = n2 n 2 ) = n . We compare now the variances for thermal (Planck) light and Poissonian (i.e. laser ) light and we nd:

P oiss =

n <

+ n = P lanck

(9)

c) We rst calculate the photon ux : = 1013 W = 2.59 105 photons/sec 2.41eV (10)

The average photon count is then given by: n = = 0.2 2.59 105 0.1 = 5180 and then the standard deviation n = 5180 = 72 2 (11)

Quantum Optics: Solutions J. Faist

Series No 01 21/9/2012, hand in 1/10/2012

2. Photon number distribution: multi-mode thermal light. The density (k)dk of the eld modes, dened as the number of modes per unit volume of cavity having their wavenumber in the specic range, is given by the following equation. (k)dk = k 2 dk 2 (12)

From = ck, we can convert into an expression for density ()d of the mode having their frequency between and + d, ()d = 2 d 2 c3 (13)

Now the wavelength is = 500 nm and its linewidth of 0.1 nm. Thus we obtain the number of modes per volume, Nm /V = 2 d = 4.0 1016 2 c3 (14)

In general, for multi-mode (m-modes) thermal light assuming the modes are suciently close to each other in frequency, the variance of the total number of photon is given n 2 by, 2 = n + Nm This relation indicates that multi-mode thermal light has a smaller variance with respect to single mode thermal light and it approaches the Poisson statistic when m . The presence of the multiple mode provides averaging, thereby reducing the noisiness of the light. 3. We consider a closed cavity kept at a xed temperature T. a) We can employ the average photon number per single mode per single frequency which is expressed by the Planck thermal excitation function n = eh/k1 T 1 : B T = h 1 kB ln[ n + 1] (15)

and for n = 0.1 we obtain T=120 mK b) We start by writing Plancks law: u = 8h 3 1 3 h/kB T 1 c e (16)

where h is the energy of a photon of frequency . We can now write the average number of photons per unit volume and per unit frequency at a given cavity temperature T 3

Series No 01(suite)

21/9/2012, hand in 1/10/2012

n =

u 8 2 1 = 3 h/k T B h c e 1

(17)

So, by integrating over all the frequencies we obtain the average number of photons per unit volume at a temperature T.

N=
0

n d =

8 2 8 2 1 d = 3 d = c3 eh/kB T 1 c 0 eh/kB T 1 0 3 3 8 kB T x2 kB T = 3 dx 2.4 8 c h ex 1 hc 0

(18)

In the case of the cosmic background radiation we have that: N 2.4 8 kB 2.72 hc
3

= 4.1 108 photons/m3

(19)

c) We can apply the previous formula by calculating the volume of the cavity as c 3 = 1.24 1010 m3 where = 6 109 Hz and assuming a Vcav = 106 temperature of T=120 mK we obtain for the photons: Nphot = 2.4 8 kB T 2 c
3

Vcav

4.4 106 photons

(20)

The result is quite surprising because, for the same temperature, in one case we nd 0.1 thermal photons (at a specic frequency) and by integrating over all the frequencies we nd about 105 less photons. In order to integrate the Plancks thermal excitation we used an expression for the density of eld modes which relies on the assumption that k = 2 is much larger than L where L is the characteristic dimension of our cavity (and then L). (see for example Loudons text). But this is in contradiction with the electronic cavity used in the experiment, which is extremely subwavelength (V=106 3 L = 102 ).