Cavity Quantum Electrodynamics

Abstract

This thesis is an investigation of the following four key concepts related to light: The position dependent Lamb-shift giving rise to a magnetic Casimir-Polder force close to a dielectric medium has been studied. Memory effects causing a deviation from exponential decay has been studied for spontaneous emission close to a dielectric medium. An emitter-detector system is motivated by Noether's theorem to study the photon momentum transfer near a dielectric body. Temporal coherence interference effects of classical and quantum light is studied in the Michelson-Morley interferometer using a quantum-optics framework.

The major object of interest for this thesis is the discussion of the relationship between the classical and the quantum description of light. A classical description often give a simpler approach making it easier to understand the fundamentals of the system. However, some effects are only obtained using a quantum mechanically description.

The Schrodinger equation has been used to find the time-evolution of a quantized electromagnetic field satisfying the Maxwell equations. The quantization procedure cannot be carried out using the standard quantization scheme. A dyadic Green's function formalism has therefore been used for the dissipative system to quantize the field using the fluctuation-dissipation theorem. Glauber theory of photodetection has been applied when describing the photon detectors. Analytical methods have been used to the achievable extent, with a substantial contribution from conventional and specially developed numerical methods. Since the fully quantized system rapidly increases in complexity, the investigated system is simplified by adding dynamic boundary conditions using classical electromagnetic theory.