The Method of Second Quantization

Photonics is the discipline of electrons and photons working in tandem to create new physics, new devices and new applications. This textbook employs a pedagogical approach that facilitates access to the fundamentals of quantum photonics. Beginning with a review of the quantum properties of photons and electrons, the book then introduces the concept of their non-locality at the quantum level.

"Quantum Chemistry" is the course material of a European Summer School in Quantum Chemistry, organized by Bj|rn O. Roos. It consists of lectures by outstanding scientists who participate in the education of students and young scientists.

viii • The second new chapter, Chapter 6, discusses video compression. The chapter opens with a general description of CRT operation and basic analog and digital video concepts. It continues with a general discussion of video compression, and it concludes with a description of MPEG-1 and H.261. • Audio compression is the topic of the third new chapter, Chapter 7. The first topic in this chapter is the properties of the human audible system and how they can be exploited to achieve lossy audio compression. A discussion of a few simple audio compression methods follows, and the chapter concludes with a description of the three audio layers of MPEG-1, including the very popular mp3 format. Other new material consists of the following: • Conditional image RLE (Section 1.4.2). • Scalar quantization (Section 1.6). • The QM coder used in JPEG, JPEG 2000, and JBIG is now included in Sec­ tion 2.16. • Context-tree weighting is discussed in Section 2.19. Its extension to lossless image compression is the topic of Section 4.24. • Section 3.4 discusses a sliding buffer method called repetition times. • The troublesome issue of patents is now also included (Section 3.25). • The relatively unknown Gray codes are discussed in Section 4.2.1, in connection with image compression. • Section 4.3 discusses intuitive methods for image compression, such as subs- pling and vector quantization.

The book gives an introduction to the field quantization (second quantization) of light and matter with applications to atomic physics. The first chapter briefly reviews the origins of special relativity and quantum mechanics and the basic notions of quantum information theory and quantum statistical mechanics. The second chapter is devoted to the second quantization of the electromagnetic field, while the third chapter shows the consequences of the light field quantization in the description of electromagnetic transitions.