Related papers: Photon localization and vacuum noise in optical me…
We present the quantum theory of the measurement of bosonic particles by multipixel detectors. For the sake of clarity, we specialize on beams of photons. We study the measurement of different spatial beam characteristics, as position and…
Accurate optical sensing and micromanipulation requires sensitive measurements of the position, orientation, and dynamics of small particles--and sometimes even large objects--under consideration. The signals acquired in the process,…
The NewtonWigner basis of orthonormal localized states is generalized to orthonormal and relativistic biorthonormal bases on an arbitrary hyperplane in spacetime. This covariant formalism is applied to the measurement of photon location…
The photon polarization tensor is the central building block of an effective theory description of photon propagation in the quantum vacuum. It accounts for the vacuum fluctuations of the underlying theory, and in the presence of external…
The realization that electron localization in disordered systems (Anderson localization) is ultimately a wave phenomenon has led to the suggestion that photons could be similarly localized by disorder. This conjecture attracted wide…
The questions of whether a photon can be localized in an arbitrarily small volume and what is the allowable strength of that localization (the decrease with distance of the functional form) are questions of current interest. We propose a…
We discuss the spatial properties of quantum radiation emitted by a multipole transition in a single atom. The qualitative difference between the representations of plane and spherical waves of photons is examined. In particular, the…
The propagation of electromagnetic waves in a Lorentz-symmetry violating scenario where there is a region of polarized vacuum is studied. It turns out that the photon field acquires an interesting polarization state, possibly useful to set…
A new process associated with the nonlinear optical properties of the electromagnetic vacuum, as predicted by quantum electrodynamics, is described. This can be called photon acceleration in vacuum, and corresponds to the frequency shift…
The continuous transition from a low resolution quantum nondemolition measurement of light field intensity to a precise measurement of photon number is described using a generalized measurement postulate. In the intermediate regime,…
We consider the lattice analog of a recently proposed continuum model for the propagation of one- and two-photon states in a random medium. We find that there is localization of single photons in an energy band centered at the resonant…
In quantum optics it is usual to describe the basic energy quanta of the electromagnetic (EM) field, photons, in terms of monochromatic waves which have a definite energy and momentum, and satisfy bosonic commutation relations. Taking this…
We show that the standard method of introducing the quantum description of the electromagnetic field -- by canonical field quantization -- is not the only one. We have chosen here the relativistic quantum mechanics of the photon as the…
The positive operator valued measure (POVM) for a photon counting array detector is derived and found to equal photon flux density integrated over pixel area and measurement time. Since photon flux density equals number density multiplied…
Signatures of photon localization are observed in a constellation of transport phenomena which reflect the transition from diffusive to localized waves. The dimensionless conductance, g, and the ratio of the typical spectral width and…
It has very recently been suggested that asymmetric coupling of electromagnetic fields to thermal reservoirs under nonequilibrium conditions can produce unexpected oscillatory behavior in the local photon statistics in layered structures.…
A particular form for the quantum indeterminacy of relative spacetime position of events is derived from the limits of measurement possible with Planck wavelength radiation. The indeterminacy predicts fluctuations from a classically defined…
The paper focuses on the problem of localization in quantum mechanics. It is well known that it is not possible to define a localization observable for the photon by means of projection valued measures. Conversely, that is possible by using…
It is not possible to detect a vacuum fluctuation without a test particle interacting with the vacuum fluctuation in a measurable manner. In the quantum electrodynamics calculation presented here, a photon traveling through the vacuum is…
Photodetection is a process in which an incident field induces a polarization current in the detector. The interaction of the field with this induced current excites an electron in the detector from a localized bound state to a state in…