The Properties of Light
The mystery of light has formed the core of creation stories in every culture, and attracted the earnest attentions of philosophers since at least the fifth century BCE. Their questions have ranged from how and what we see, to the interaction of light wit
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1. The Properties of Light
The mystery of light has formed the core of creation stories in every culture, and attracted the earnest attentions of philosophers since at least the fifth century BCE. Their questions have ranged from how and what we see, to the interaction of light with material bodies, and finally to the nature of light itself. This chapter begins with a brief intellectual history of light from ancient Greece to the end of the 19th century. After introducing the physical parameterization of light in terms of standard units, three concepts of light are introduced: light as a wave, light as a quantum particle, and light as a quantum field. After highlighting the distinctive characteristics of light beams from various sources – thermal radiation, luminescence from atoms and molecules, and synchrotron light sources – the distinctive physical characteristics of light beams are examined in some detail. The chapter concludes with a survey of the statistical and quantum-mechanical properties of light beams. In the appropriate limits, this treatment not only recovers the classical description of light waves and the semiclassical view of light as a stream of quanta, but also forms a consistent description of quantum phenomena – such as interference phenomena generated by single photons – that have no classical analogs.
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Introduction and Historical Sketch ......... 1.1.1 From the Greeks and Romans to Johannes Kepler....................... 1.1.2 From Descartes to Newton ............. 1.1.3 Newton and Huygens ................... 1.1.4 The 19th Century: The Triumph of the Wave Picture .... Parameterization of Light ..................... 1.2.1 Spectral Regions and Their Classification .................
1.2.2 Radiometric Units......................... 1.2.3 Photometric Units ........................ 1.2.4 Photon and Spectral Units .............
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Physical Models of Light ........................ 1.3.1 The Electromagnetic Wave Picture .. 1.3.2 The Semiclassical Picture: Light Quanta................................ 1.3.3 Light as a Quantum Field ..............
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Thermal and Nonthermal Light Sources .. 1.4.1 Thermal Light .............................. 1.4.2 Luminescence Light ...................... 1.4.3 Light from Synchrotron Radiation...
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Physical Properties of Light ................... 1.5.1 Intensity ..................................... 1.5.2 Velocity of Propagation ................. 1.5.3 Polarization................................. 1.5.4 Energy and Power Transport .......... 1.5.5 Momentum Transport: The Poynting Theorem and Light Pressure .......... 1.5.6 Spectral Line Shape ...................... 1.5.7 Optical Coherence ........................
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Statistical Properties of Light................. 1.6.1 Probability Density as a Function of Intensity.............. 1.6.2 Statistical Correlation Functions ..... 1.6.3 Number Distribution Functions of Light Sources ...........................
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