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The traditional pedagogical paradigm in physics is based on a deductive approach. However, with the recent advances in information technology, we are facing a dramatic increase in the amount of readily available information; hence, the…
Helping students become proficient problem-solvers is one of the primary goals of physics courses. In part 1 of this article, we summarized the vast research on problem-solving relevant for physics instruction, and here we discuss a…
Interactions between light and matter play an instrumental role in many fields of science, giving rise to important applications in spectroscopy, sensing, quantum information processing, and lasers. In most of these applications, light is…
Feynman described the double slit experiment as "a phenomenon which is impossible, absolutely impossible, to explain in any classical way and which has in it the heart of quantum mechanics". The double slit experiment, performed one photon…
Geometric phases are ubiquitous in physics; they act as memories of the transformation of a physical system. In optics, the most prominent examples are the Pancharatnam-Berry phase and the spin-redirection phase. Recent technological…
Scattering of light in complex media scrambles optical wavefronts and breaks the principles of conventional imaging methods. For decades, researchers have endeavored to conquer the problem by inventing approaches such as adaptive optics,…
Conventional wisdom dictates that to image the position of fluorescent atoms or molecules, one should stimulate as much emission and collect as many photons as possible. That is, in this classical case, it has always been assumed that the…
The quantum theory of the electromagnetic field uncovered that classical forms of light were indeed produced by distinct superpositions of nonclassical multiphoton wavepackets. Specifically, partially coherent light represents the most…
The quantum nature of light enables potentially revolutionary communication technologies. Key to advancing this area of research is a clear understanding of the concepts of states, modes, fields, and photons. The concept of field modes…
The human eye contains millions of rod photoreceptor cells, and each one is a single-photon detector. Whether people can actually see a single photon, which requires the rod signal to propagate through the rest of the noisy visual system…
In this review, we introduce the notion of quantum nonclassicality of light, and the role of nonclassicality in optical quantum metrology. The first part of the paper focuses on defining and characterizing the notion of nonclassicality and…
In this paper, we first discuss the concept of an emission wave. In the history of science, this is the first time we have discovered a new way in which (transverse) waves are realized in nature. It can therefore be expected to lead to…
The wave-particle duality has been said to contain the entire mystery of quantum mechanics. Many delayed-choice experiments have been performed to further understand the wave-particle duality. Here, we reveal some flaws in the known…
We describe a research project carried out with a group of undergraduate physics students and aimed at exploring the use of a neural network to study a classical problem in wave optics whose analytical solution is well known: the…
In this short paper a new thought experiment has been introduced to illustrate the famous Heisenberg's uncertainty principle based on Otto-Wiener's experiment (1890) associated with standing light waves. This illustration is quite easy as…
Nonclassical states of light and their correlations lie at the heart of quantum optics, serving as fundamental resources that underpin both the exploration of quantum phenomena and the realisation of quantum information protocols. These…
Matter-wave optics is often viewed as a linear analogue of photonics, where noninteracting particles are coherently split, diffracted, and recombined, and interference arises from single-particle coherence. In ultracold quantum gases,…
The coherent manipulation of the atomic matter waves is of great interest both in science and technology. In order to study how an atom optic device alters the coherence of an atomic beam, we consider the quantum lens proposed by Averbukh…
The well-known interference pattern of bright and dark fringes was first observed for light beams back in 1801 by Thomas Young. The maximum visibility fringes occur when the irradiance of the two beams is equal, and as the ratio of the beam…
Although the observation of optical spectra is common practice in physics classes, students are usually limited to a passive, qualitative observation of nice colours. This article discusses a diffraction-based spectrometer that allows…