While going through a textbook on quantum optics (by Knight), I came upon parametric down conversion. Although its explained mathematically in the book, it was not clear on the "physics" behind it, or at least I could not understand it. Could anyone refer a book on the same??
Basically it's a process (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_parametric_down-conversion), in which a photon can spontaneously split in two photons. This process conserves the energy, so the sum of energies of the resulting two photons is equal to the energy of the initial photon. The process is facilitated by vacuum fluctuations, similar to spontaneous emission in atoms (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_emission). For this process to be measurably efficient the effective quadratic nonlinearity of the medium (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonlinear_optics) has to be sufficiently large (http://www.rp-photonics.com/nonlinear_crystal_materials.html).
you can have a look at Nonlinear Optics book of Robert Boyd to have complete discussion.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Mathematics