What is quantum optics?

1 Answer
Jan 14, 2015

Quantum optics is a field of quantum physics that deals specifically with the interaction of photons with matter.

Quantum optics (and quantum physics as a whole) views electromagnetic radiation as traveling in the form of both a wave and a particle, a phenomena called wave particle duality . The most common explanation of how this works is that the photons move in a stream of particles, but the overall behavior of those particles are determined by a quantum wave function that determines the probability of the particles being in a given location at a given time.