One Hundred Years of Light Quanta

R. Glauber, Nobel Prize Winner, Harvard University

My talk will resemble the Nobel Lecture with the above title. The basic principles of the quantum theory of light evolved to nearly their present form by 1927. Many experimental results have verified these principles over the next thirty years. Virtually all of those verifications had to do with the behavior of light quanta detected one at a time. The first experiments that involved the detection of two or more light quanta at a time were performed in the 1950's and revealed some statistical surprises. The development of the laser beginning in the 1960's made a new realm of quantum experiments accessible. Quantum optics now deals with the interaction of atoms with arbitrary numbers of light quanta and permits the realization of experiments that could only be considred hypothetically in earlier days.

The P/T Colloquium is
typically held each
Thursday, 3:45–5:00 PM.
Refreshments are served
at 3:15 PM.