Exploring the Quantum: Atoms, Cavities, and Photons.Jonathan P. Dowling

Citation: American Journal of Physics 82, 86 (2014); doi: 10.1119/1.4827830 View online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1119/1.4827830 View Table of Contents: http://scitation.aip.org/content/aapt/journal/ajp/82/1?ver=pdfcov Published by the American Association of Physics Teachers Articles you may be interested in Cavity quantum electrodynamics for photon mediated transfer of quantum states J. Appl. Phys. 109, 113110 (2011); 10.1063/1.3596522 Effective quantum teleportation of an atomic state between two cavities with the cross-Kerr nonlinearity byinterference of polarized photons J. Appl. Phys. 109, 103111 (2011); 10.1063/1.3592290 Exploring the Quantum: Atoms, Cavities, and Photons Phys. Today 60, 61 (2007); 10.1063/1.2774103 Cavity QED with Single Atoms and Photons AIP Conf. Proc. 770, 313 (2005); 10.1063/1.1928865 Step by step engineered entanglement with atoms and photons in a cavity AIP Conf. Proc. 551, 143 (2001); 10.1063/1.1354346

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BOOK REVIEWSThe downloaded PDF for any Review in this section contains all the Reviews in this section.

Craig F. Bohren, EditorPennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802; mailing address: P.O. Box 887, Boalsburg, PA 16827; bohren@meteo.psu.edu

Exploring the Quantum: Atoms, Cavities, and Photons.

Serge Haroche and Jean-Michel Raimond 616 pp.

Oxford U. P., Oxford UK, 2013. Price: $59.95 (paperback)

ISBN 978-0-19968031-3. (Jonathan P. Dowling,

Reviewer.)

When reviewing a book I ask myself one key question

before diving into it—what kind of book is it? Is it a text-

book, a popular book, a reference book, or what? Usually it

is easy to tell because the authors state up front their intent.

However, the preface here is somewhat vague on that point

and initially I was unable to pigeonhole it in any of my pre-

conceived categories. The authors state that the book is

based upon a series of lectures on quantum information that

they gave at the College de France and the �Ecole Normale

Sup�erieure from 2001–2006, and that the book is intended

for students at the undergraduate or graduate level that pos-

sess an elementary knowledge of quantum mechanics. But

intended for what end? I decided to ignore my pre-

pigeonholing principle and launch into reading it and then

save my analysis for when I was done.

Having now emerged from what I found to be a charming,

insightful, and well-executed volume, I have decided that it

is most likely a reference book or more likely an “or-what”

book. It is certainly not a popular book, since it violates

Stephen Hawking’s Law: For each equation the number of

books sold will drop by an order of magnitude. (There is

quite a bit of math here.) At first I might be tempted to rec-

ommend it as a textbook for an upper division or graduate

course in quantum optics, which is the field covered by most

of the material, but the lack of worked example problems (or

any problems at all) cautions me against recommending it as

a primary text without adding the caveat that lecturers would

have to provide such problems to their students under their

own steam.

It is thusly that I am led to highly recommend it as a sup-

plementary reference text for an upper division or graduate

course in quantum optics or atomic, molecular, and optical

physics. The book’s focus on the foundations of quantum

mechanics, and particularly on the quantum physicists’ new-

found ability to pull Gedanken experiments out of

Gedankenland and place them squarely in the realm of real-

ity, is the primary attraction. This emphasis on foundations

and experiments upon small quantum systems, such as single

photons or atoms, is often lacking or superficially treated in

all other quantum optics textbooks that I am familiar with,

and so Exploring the Quantum is a perfect complement to

those other textbooks.

As a reference it perfectly encapsulates much of the

excitement the field of quantum optics generated in the pe-

riod prior to about 2006, although some very recent exciting

advances, such as cavity quantum electrodynamics (CQED)

experiments in the super-strong coupling regime, where

superconducting circuitry is deployed, are missing.

Similarly, there is quite a good chapter on Bose-Einstein

condensates (in and out of optical lattices), but no discussion

of more recent experiments on degenerate Fermi gases. Even

the CQED experiments discussed focus primarily on the

work of Haroche (and also Herbert Walther), where excited

Rydberg atoms are launched through superconducting micro-

wave cavities. Little is mentioned about the optical CQED

experiments with ground state atoms—an approach champ-

ioned by Jeffery Kimble and others. For this reason, even as

a reference text, it is not as complete as one might like. I sus-

pect the authors were not going for a most general reference

book but rather something a bit more focused on their own

approaches and experiments. I think that is just fine.

Along those lines of this being more of a personal scien-

tific history (or even scientific autobiography), I would also

highly recommend it in the “or-what” category to anybody

with a good background in quantum theory who would like

to see a well-put-together book that goes into some depth on

the particular scientific advances that led to the 2012 Nobel

Prize in physics, awarded jointly to co-author Serge Haroche

(and to non-coauthor David Wineland), “…for ground-

breaking experimental methods that enable measuring and

manipulation of individual quantum systems.” This book,

first published in 2006, presciently anticipates the worldwide

interest that this particular field would garner after that 2012

Nobel-Prize award. Haroche’s work on CQED is covered in

the greatest detail but there is also a chapter on ion-trap

experiments of Wineland (and others) that is quite nice. (It is

because of that Nobel Prize that I have been asked to review

this book in the first place, so long after its original publica-

tion date in hardback.)

The first two chapters are historical and foundational with

the focus on how old thought experiments involving single

photons or atoms have now become new, real, experiments.

This is an approach that I like. The weirder aspects of quan-

tum theory are developed here: quantum entanglement, com-

plementarity, Schr€odinger’s cat, and finishing up with a

connection of those strange notions to quantum information

processing, which gives the text a practical and modern feel.

(Gone are the days—I hope!—when starting your book out

with the foundations of quantum theory would label you as a

nut job.) Chapter three, “Of spins and springs,” develops the

general theory of two-level systems (spins) coupled to har-

monic oscillator field modes (springs) and ends with the ex-

position of that most famous workhorse of quantum optics—

the Jaynes-Cummings model for such a coupling. The authors

cleverly unite all the following chapters with this notion that

everything of interest here is just spins coupled to springs.

Chapter four, which is likely the most mathematically daunt-

ing for even the heartiest undergraduate student (and even a

86 Am. J. Phys. 82 (1), January 2014 http://aapt.org/ajp VC 2014 American Association of Physics Teachers 86

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hale graduate student), develops the quantum theory of open

systems—systems coupled to an environment. Krauss opera-

tors, master equations, and quantum trajectories here rule the

day and the methods are applied to damped two-level sys-

tems, the micromaser, and Dicke superradiance.

Chapters five through seven are all about CQED, with a

history of the theory and experiments, and then they are all

about exploiting those experiments to illuminate the weird

quantum foundational things discussed earlier—how to

actually make Schr€odinger cats, entangled states, and ele-

mentary quantum-computing gates. The book focuses mostly

on those types of CQED experiments carried out by the

authors themselves, giving the discussion an authoritative

tone. In chapter eight we replace Rydberg atoms coupled to

photon fields with ions (in ion traps) coupled to phonon

fields, and the spin-spring formalism is at this stage well

developed enough to understand the uses of phonon-coupled

trapped ions, particularly for quantum information process-

ing, the crux of Wineland’s Nobel-Prize winning work.

Chapter nine, “Entangling matter waves,” which is about

Bose-Einstein condensates in optical lattices, is a bit of an

odd-man-out. The simple notion developed in all the previ-

ous chapters, that everything here can be understood as spins

and springs, is in this penultimate chapter a bit of a stretch.

But the chapter stands well on its own and is a nice introduc-

tion to how BECs (manipulated in optical lattices) can also

be used for quantum information processing and testing the

foundations of quantum theory. If I were to use this book to

supplement a course on quantum optics, I would be tempted

to exclude this chapter; but if instead I were to use it to sup-

plement a course on atomic, molecular, and optical physics,

I would be tempted to include it.

In summary, with the caveats mentioned above I very

much liked the book. Its re-release in paperback in 2013,

conveniently timed to appear shortly after the 2012 Nobel

Prize award in physics, makes it a super read for those inter-

ested in the history of those ground-breaking experimental

methods that led to that prize. For those of us in this field,

we were all very happy to see a Nobel Prize award that for

the first time mentioned the words quantum computer in the

announcement. Quantum technologies such as quantum

computers, as well as quantum metrological devices such as

Wineland’s precise atomic clocks, emerged from the studies

of the foundations of quantum mechanics. Such foundational

studies were considered fringe or even crackpot areas of

research in the 1970s and 1980s, but they have rapidly

evolved in the past 20 years to respectable, cutting-edge,

Nobel-Prize-winning work. The two authors guided much of

that rapid evolution, and it is very well documented here in

Exploring the Quantum.

Jonathan P. Dowling is Hearne Chair Professor ofTheoretical Physics at Louisiana State University in BatonRouge, Louisiana. His research interests are quantum optics,quantum information processing, and other quantum tech-nologies. He is author of a popular book on quantum com-puting entitled, Schr€odinger’s Killer App—Race to Build theFirst Quantum Computer.

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Local Group Cosmology. David Mart�ınez-Delgado (Ed.).

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The Principles of Thermodynamics. N. D. Hari Dass. 350

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