The quantization of the electromagnetic field in vacuum is presented without reference to lagrangean quantum field theory. The equal time commutators of the fields are calculated from basic principles. A physical discussion of the commutators suggest that the electromagnetic fields are macroscopic emergent properties of more fundamental physical system: the photons.
Based on the concepts of the quantum field theory of virtual photons as quanta of electromagnetic interaction, we discuss the physical content of the phenomena underlying the principle of quantum uncertainties. We consider the features of the uncertainty relations and the properties of the elementary particles (electrons, protons, etc.) under the conditions of the formation of quantum bound states at atomic and subatomic distances.
The free electromagnetic field, solution of Maxwell's equations and carrier of energy, momentum and spin, is construed as an emergent collective property of an ensemble of photons, and with this, the consistency of an interpretation that considers that the photons, and not the electromagnetic fields, are the primary ontology is established.
A preliminary model of meaningful quanta of information arising from the quantum vacuum, and giving rise to the elementary quantum fields, is presented. We attempt to establish an equivalence of information and physical action, with the quanta (or packets of words) of information as a source of quantum fields (with a possible role in governing the interactions among those), similar to the quantum fields being the source of classical information. The information and quantum fields emerge in an entangled form out of the quantum vacuum, with their common underlying basis bearing intrinsically bot…
The purpose of this article is to 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 instead as the starting point the relativistic quantum mechanics of photons. Our present understanding of the nature of photons significantly differs from what has been known years ago when the concept of a photon has only been emerging. We show how the description of photons treated as elementary particles merges smoothly with the classical description of the electromagnetic field and leads…
In this paper we take up the quantal two-centre problem where the Coulomb centres have arbitrary positive charges. In analogy with the symmetric case, treated in the second paper of this series of papers, we use the knowledge on the quasiclassical dynamics to express the contour integrals in the first- and third-order approximations of the phase-integral quantization conditions, given in the first paper of this series of papers, in terms of complete elliptic integrals. For various values of the distance between these charges the accuracy of the formulas obtained is illustrated by comparison wi…
An antisymmetric tensor, the photon tensor, is defined for the description of the photon as a massless relativistic particle. The photon can be visualized as an essentially two dimensional rotating object. The quantum mechanical description of a single photon is presented and it is shown that it is wrong to associate the quantum states of a photon with the macroscopic electromagnetic fields. This work is part of a series devoted to the attempt to understand the quantum of electromagnetic radiation, based on the assumption that the photons are the primary ontology and that the electromagnetic f…
Arbitrarily small changes in the commutation relations suffice to transform the usual singular quantum theories into regular quantum theories. This process is an extension of canonical quantization that we call general quantization. Here we apply general quantization to the time-independent linear harmonic oscillator. The unstable Heisenberg group becomes the stable group SO(3). This freezes out the zero-point energy of very soft or very hard oscillators, like those responsible for the infrared or ultraviolet divergencies of usual field theories, without much changing the medium oscillators. I…
Based on Lorentz invariance and Born reciprocity invariance, the canonical quantization of Special Relativity (SR) has been shown to provide a unified origin for the existence of Dirac's Hamiltonian and a self adjoint time operator that circumvents Pauli's objection. As such, this approach restores to Quantum Mechanics (QM) the treatment of space and time on an equivalent footing as that of momentum and energy. Second quantization of the time operator field follows step by step that of the Dirac Hamiltonian field. It introduces the concept of time quanta, in a similar way to the energy quanta …
A simple approach is proposed for the quantization of the electromagnetic field in nonlinear and inhomogeneous media. Given the dielectric function and nonlinear susceptibilities, the Hamiltonian of the electromagnetic field is determined completely by this quantization method. From Heisenberg's equations we derive Maxwell's equations for the field operators. When the nonlinearity goes to zero, this quantization method returns to the generalized canonical quantization procedure for linear inhomogeneous media [Phys. Rev. A, 43, 467, 1991]. The explicit Hamiltonians for the second-order and thir…
Canonical quantization of electromagnetic field inside the time--spatially dispersive inhomogeneous dielectrics is presented. Interacting electromagnetic and matter excitation fields create the closed system, Hamiltonian of which may be diagonalized by generalized polariton transformation. Resulting dispersion relations coincide with the classical ones obtained by the solution of wave equation, the corresponding mode decomposition is, however, orthogonal and complete in the enlarged Hilbert space.
On the example of stationary states of a system consisting of an atom and a quantized electromagnetic field (the Jaynes-Cummings model in free space), it is shown that the physical characteristics of the system (as the energy and the probability distribution of finding the center of mass of the atom) explicitly depend on the choice of the basis of quantization of the electromagnetic field. Therefore, the secondary quantization procedure is not independent of the choice of the quantization basis in the interaction of the field with the material medium.
It has been found, that free electromagnetic (EM) field in restricted volume (typical experimental case) consists of two independent and equally possible components with different parity under spatial inversion transformations. Either of the two components indicated represents the system of also two independent and equally possible fields, which are even and uneven under time reversal transformations. The rules for local quantization of EM-field in Minkowski space are obtained.
We present a quantization procedure for the electromagnetic field in a circular cylindrical cavity with perfectly conducting walls, which is based on the decomposition of the field. A new decomposition procedure is proposed; all vector mode functions satisfying the boundary conditions are obtained with the help of this decomposition. After expanding the quantized field in terms of the vector mode functions, it is possible to derive the Hamiltonian for this quantized system.
It is currently believed that light quantum or the quantization of light energy is beyond classical physics and the picture of wave-particle duality, which was criticized by Einstein but attracted a number of experimental researches, is necessary for the description of light. We show in this paper, however, that the quantization of light energy in vacuum, which is the same as that in quantum electrodynamics, can be derived directly from the classical electromagnetic theory through the consideration of statistics based on classical physics. Therefore, the quantization of energy is an intrinsic …
By introducing a suitable Lagrangian, a canonical quantization of the electromagnetic field in the presence of a non-dispersive bi-anisotropic inhomogeneous magnetodielectric medium is investigated. A tensor projection operator is defined and the commutation relation between the vector potential and its canonically conjugate variable is written in terms of the projection operator. The quantization method is generalized in the presence of the atomic systems. The spontaneous emission of a two-level atom located in a non-dispersive anisotropic megnetodielectric medium is studied.
A bi-anisotropic magnetodielectric medium is modeled by two independent set of three dimensional harmonic oscillators .A fully canonical quantization of electromagnetic field is demonstrated in the presence of a bi-anisotropic magnetodielectric medium. The electric and magnetic polarization fields of the medium are obtained in terms of the dynamical variable modeling the medium. The Heisenberg equations of the system are solved for a multilayer bi-anisotropic magnetodielectric medium.
We consider an approach in which the usual wave function in the quadrature representation of mode j of the electromagnetic field is further quantized to produce a field operator. Since the electromagnetic field is already second quantized, this corresponds to an additional or third quantization. The third-quantization approach can be used to perform certain quantum optics calculations in the Heisenberg picture that could only be performed in the Schrodinger picture when using the conventional second-quantized theory. This approach also allows an interesting generalization of quantum optics and…
Very recently we present a theory [Wei-long She, Chin. Phys. 14, 2514(2005); Online: http://www.jop.org/journals/cp; http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0512097] to show that the quantization of light energy in vacuum can be derived directly from classical electromagnetic theory through the consideration of statistics based on classical physics and reveal that the quantization of energy is an intrinsic property of light as a classical electromagnetic wave and has no need of being related to particles. In this theory a key concept of stability of statistical distribution was involved. Here is a note …
We present a Gupta-Bleuler quantization scheme for the electromagnetic field in time-dependent dielectric media. Starting from the Maxwell equations, a generalization of the Lorentz gauge condition adapted to time varying dielectrics is derived. Using this gauge, a Gupta-Bleuler approach to quantize all polarizations of the radiation field and the corresponding constraint condition are introduced. This new approach is different from the quantized electromagnetic field in vacuum in the sense that here the contributions of unphysical photons cannot be thoroughly eliminated, which further lead to…
A gauge invariant quantization in a closed integral form is developed over a linear phase space endowed with an inhomogeneous Faraday electromagnetic tensor. An analog of the Groenewold product formula (corresponding to Weyl ordering) is obtained via a membrane magnetic area, and extended to the product of N symbols. The problem of ordering in quantization is related to different configurations of membranes: a choice of configuration determines a phase factor that fixes the ordering and controls a symplectic groupoid structure on the secondary phase space. A gauge invariant solution of the qua…
By modeling a dielectric medium with two independent reservoirs, i.e., electric and magnetic reservoirs, the electromagnetic field is quantized in a linear dielectric medium consistently. A Hamiltonian is proposed from which using the Heisenberg equations, not only the Maxwell equations but also the structural equations can be obtained. Using the Laplace transformation, the wave equation for the electromagnetic vector potential is solved in the case of a homogeneous dielectric medium. Some examples are considered showing the applicability of the model to both absorptive and nonabsorptive diele…
Modeling an anisotropic spatially and temporarily dispersive magnetodielectric medium by two independent collections of three dimensional vector fields, we demonstrate a fully canonical quantization of electromagnetic field in the presence of such a medium. Two tensor fields which couple the electromagnetic field with the medium and have an important role in this quantization method are introduced. The electric and magnetic polarization fields of the medium naturally are concluded in terms of the coupling tensors and the dynamical variables modeling the magnetodielectric medium. In Heisenberg …
We present a quantization scheme for the electromagnetic field interacting with atomic systems in the presence of dispersing and absorbing magnetodielectric media, including left-handed material having negative real part of the refractive index. The theory is applied to the spontaneous decay of a two-level atom at the center of a spherical free-space cavity surrounded by magnetodielectric matter of overlapping band-gap zones. Results for both big and small cavities are presented, and the problem of local-field corrections within the real-cavity model is addressed.
Analogous to Landau quantization related to a neutral particle possessing an electric quadrupole moment, we generalize such Landau quantization to include position-dependent mass (PDM) neutral particles. Using cylindrical coordinates, the exact solvability of PDM neutral particles with an electric quadrupole moment moving in electromagnetic fields is reported. The interaction between the electric quadrupole moment of a PDM neutral particle and a magnetic field in the absence of an electric field is analyzed for two different radial cylindrical PDM settings. Next, two particular cases of radial…
Modeling a nonlinear anisotropic magnetodielectric medium with spatial-temporal dispersion by two continuum collections of three dimensional harmonic oscillators, a fully canonical quantization of the electromagnetic field is demonstrated in the presence of such a medium. Some coupling tensors of various ranks are introduced that couple the magnetodielectric medium with the electromagnetic field. The polarization and magnetization fields of the medium are defined in terms of the coupling tensors and the oscillators modeling the medium. The electric and magnetic susceptibility tensors of the me…
By modeling a linear, anisotropic and inhomogeneous magnetodielectric medium with two independent set of harmonic oscillators, electromagnetic field is quantized in such a medium. The electric and magnetic polarizations of the medium are expressed as linear combinations of the ladder operators describing the magnetodielectric medium. The Maxwell and the constitutive equations of the medium are obtained as the Heisenberg equations of the total system. The electric and magnetic susceptibilities of the medium are obtained in terms of the tensors coupling the medium with the electromagnetic field.…
The electromagnetic field in an anisotropic and inhomogeneous magnetodielectric is quantized by modelling the medium with two independent quantum fields. Some coupling tensors coupling the electromagnetic field with the medium are introduced. Electric and magnetic polarizations are obtained in terms of the ladder operators of the medium and the coupling tensors explicitly. Using a minimal coupling scheme for electric and magnetic interactions, the Maxwell equations and the constitutive equations of the medium are obtained. The electric and magnetic susceptibility tensors of the medium are calc…
By modeling a linear polarizable and magnetizable medium (magneto-dielectric) with two quantum fields, namely E and M, electromagnetic field is quantized in such a medium consistently and systematically. A Hamiltonian is proposed from which, using the Heisenberg equations, Maxwell and constitutive equations of the medium are obtained. For a homogeneous medium, the equation of motion of the quantum vector potential, $\vec{A}$, is derived and solved analytically. Two coupling functions which describe the electromagnetic properties of the medium are introduced. Four examples are considered showin…
Starting from a Lagrangian, the electromagnetic field is quantized in the presence of a body rotating along its axis of symmetry. Response functions and fluctuation-dissipation relations are obtained. A general formula for rotational friction and power radiated by a rotating dielectric body is obtained in terms of the dyadic Green's tensor. Hamiltonian is determined and possible generalizations are discussed. As an example, the rotational friction and power radiated by a spherical dielectric in the vicinity of a semi-infinite dielectric plane is obtained and discussed in some limiting cases.
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. Better understanding of the predicted phenomena could enable useful applications related to thermometry, noise filtering, and enhancing optical interactions. In this work we briefly review the field quantization and study the local steady state temperature distributions in optical cavities formed of lossless and lossy media to show that also local field tempe…
A quantization scheme for the phenomenological Maxwell theory of the full electromagnetic field in an inhomogeneous three-dimensional, dispersive and absorbing dielectric medium is developed. The classical Maxwell equations with spatially varying and Kramers-Kronig consistent permittivity are regarded as operator-valued field equations, introducing additional current- and charge-density operator fields in order to take into account the noise associated with the dissipation in the medium. It is shown that the equal-time commutation relations between the fundamental electromagnetic fields $\hat …
An ad hoc quantization scheme for the electromagnetic field in a weakly dispersive, transparent dielectric leads to the definition of canonical and kinetic forms for the momentum of the electromagnetic field in a dispersive medium. The canonical momentum is uniquely defined as the operator that generates spatial translations in a uniform medium, but the quantization scheme suggests two possible choices for the kinetic momentum operator, corresponding to the Abraham or the Minkowski momentum in classical electrodynamics. Another implication of this procedure is that a wave packet containing a s…
Philosophical reflection on quantum field theory has tended to focus on how it revises our conception of what a particle is. However, there has been relatively little discussion of the threat to the "reality" of particles posed by the possibility of inequivalent quantizations of a classical field theory, i.e., inequivalent representations of the algebra of observables of the field in terms of operators on a Hilbert space. The threat is that each representation embodies its own distinctive conception of what a particle is, and how a "particle" will respond to a suitably operated detector. Our m…
We use quantum-electrodynamical approach to study the initial stage of Dicke superradiance from a system of two-level atoms. Applying the zeroth-order Magnus approximation, we obtain the expression for the mean number of quanta emitted in the presence of thermal fluctuations of the electromagnetic field.
The electromagnetic field inside a cubic cavity filled up with a linear magnetodielectric medium and in the presence of external charges is quantized by modelling the magnetodielectric medium with two independent quantum fields. Electric and magnetic polarization densities of the medium are defined in terms of the ladder operators of the medium and eigenmodes of the cavity. Maxwell and constitutive equations of the medium together with the equation of motion of the charged particles have been obtained from the Heisenberg equations using a minimal coupling scheme. Spontaneous emission of a two …
The main goal of this work is to study the Dirac oscillator as a quantum field using the canonical formalism of quantum field theory and to develop the canonical quantization procedure for this system in $(1+1)$ and $(3+1)$ dimensions. This is possible because the Dirac oscillator is characterized by the absence of the Klein paradox and by the completeness of its eigenfunctions. We show that the Dirac oscillator field can be seen as constituted by infinite degrees of freedom which are identified as decoupled quantum linear harmonic oscillators. We observe that while for the free Dirac field th…
A four-dimensional photon polarization space, such that gives a different interpretation of the ladder operators for the time-like degree comparing to the Gupta-Bleuler formulation is presented. This interpretation, coming from the construction of a covariant Hamiltonian, gives positive defined norms for all the four polarization degrees of freedom. This paper is written in the background of reducible representation algebras introduced by Czachor, although the interpretation of the ladder operators as presented here could be done independently. States that reproduce standard electromagnetic fi…
We quantize the macroscopic electromagnetic field in a system of non-dispersive polarizable bodies moving at constant velocities possibly exceeding the Cherenkov threshold. It is shown that in general the quantized system is unstable and neither has a ground state nor supports stationary states. The quantized Hamiltonian is written in terms of quantum harmonic oscillators associated with both positive and negative frequencies, such that the oscillators associated with symmetric frequencies are coupled by an interaction term that does not preserve the quantum occupation numbers. Moreover, in th…
The canonical quantization of flux is performed. It is shown that according to the canonical flux quantization there must be a new uncertainty relation: $e ΔA_m . Δx_m \geq \hbar$ where $A_m$ and $Δx_m \geq l_B$ are the electromagnetic gauge potential, the position uncertainty and the magnetic length, respectively. Other arguments in favour of this uncertainty relation are also discussed.
A new scheme of field quantization is proposed. Instead of associating with different frequencies different oscillators we begin with a single oscillator that can exist in a superposition of different frequencies. The idea is applied to the electromagnetic radiation field. Using the standard Dirac-type mode-quantization of the electromagnetic field we obtain several standard properties such as coherent states or spontaneous and stimulated emission. As opposed to the standard approach the vacuum energy is finite and does not have to be removed by any ad hoc procedure.
In this paper, I argue that light is a continuous classical electromagnetic wave, while the observed so-called quantum nature of the interaction of light with matter is connected to the discrete (atomic) structure of matter and to the specific nature of the light-atom interaction. From this point of view, the Born rule for light is derived, and the double-slit experiment is analysed in detail. I show that the double-slit experiment can be explained without using the concept of a "photon", solely on the basis of classical electrodynamics. I show that within this framework, the Heisenberg uncert…
The quantization of the electromagnetic field in a three-dimensional inhomogeneous dielectric medium with losses is carried out in the framework of a damped-polariton model with an arbitrary spatial dependence of its parameters. The equations of motion for the canonical variables are solved explicitly by means of Laplace transformations for both positive and negative time. The dielectric susceptibility and the quantum noise-current density are identified in terms of the dynamical variables and parameters of the model. The operators that diagonalize the Hamiltonian are found as linear combinati…
There are several possible applications of quantum electrodynamics in dielectric media which require a quantum description for the electromagnetic field interacting with matter fields. The associated quantum models can refer to macroscopic electromagnetic fields or, in alternative, to mesoscopic fields (polarization fields) describing an effective interaction between electromagnetic field and matter fields. We adopt the latter approach, and focus on the Hopfield model for the electromagnetic field in a dielectric dispersive medium in a framework in which space-time dependent mesoscopic paramet…
The quantization of plasmons has been analyzed mostly under the assumption of an infinite-sized bulk medium interacting with the electromagnetic field. We reformulate it for finite-size media, such as metallic or dielectric nano-structures, highlighting sharp differences. By diagonalizing the Hamiltonian by means of a Lippmann-Schwinger equation, we show the contribution of two sets of bosonic operators, one stemming from medium fluctuations, and one from the electromagnetic field. The results apply to general models including dissipative and dispersive responses.
An electron-positron pair ($e^- e^+$) is created in vacuum above a critical electric field strength $E_{crt}$ which is quite large in the laboratory scale. The photon, thus the field, annihilates in the pair creation process. Here, we question if the pair creation (at $E=E_{crt}$) introduces a boundary condition in the electromagnetic state, e.g., similar to the one in angular or linear momentum. We show that introduction of such a reasonable condition yields approximately the well-known magnetic flux quanta which normally one obtains using different arguments.
We present a consistent, generally covariant quantization of light for non-vacuum birefringent, Lorentz-symmetry breaking electrodynamics in the context of the Standard Model Extension. We find that the number of light quanta in the field is not frame independent, and that the interaction of the quantized field with matter is necessarily birefringent. We also show that the conventional Lorenz gauge condition used to restrict the photon-mode basis to solutions of the Maxwell equations must be weakened to consistently describe Lorentz symmetry violation.
The ignition of two-quantum collective emission of inverted sub-ensemble of radiators due to mutual interaction of this sub-ensemble with other two dipole active atomic subsystems in process of two-photon exchanges between the atoms through the vacuum field is proposed. The three particle resonances between two-photon and single quantum transitions of inverted radiators from the ensemble are proposed for acceleration of collective decay rate of bi-photons, obtained relatively dipole-forbidden transitions of excited atomic sub-ensemble. This mutual interaction between three super-fluorescent pr…
In the framework of the canonical quantization of the electromagnetic field, we impose as primary condition on the dynamics the positive definiteness of the energy spectrum. This implies that (Glauber) coherent states have to be considered for the longitudinal and the scalar photon fields. As a result we obtain that the relation holds which in the traditional approach is called the Gupta-Bleuler condition. Gauge invariance emerges as a property of the physical states. The group structure of the theory is recognized to be the one of $SU(2) \otimes SU(1,1)$.
Quantization of electromagnetic fields is investigated in the framework of stochastic variational method (SVM). Differently from the canonical quantization, this method does not require canonical form and quantization can be performed directly from the gauge invariant Lagrangian. The gauge condition is used to choose dynamically independent variables. We verify that, in the Coulomb gauge condition, SVM result is completely equivalent to the traditional result. On the other hand, in the Lorentz gauge condition, SVM quantization can be performed without introducing the indefinite metric. The tem…
The electromagnetic field is canonically quantized in the presence of a linear, dispersive and dissipative medium that is in uniform motion. Specifically we calculate the change in the normal modes of the coupled matter-field system and find a Hamiltonian that contains negative energy normal modes. We interpret these modes as the origin of phenomena such as quantum friction, and find that a detector initially in its ground state and coupled to the electromagnetic field in the vicinity of, or within a uniformly moving medium has a non-zero probability of excitation at T=0K.
The Schrödinger theory of electrons in an external electromagnetic field can be described from the perspective of the individual electron via the `Quantal Newtonian' laws (or differential virial theorems). These laws are in terms of `classical' fields whose sources are quantal expectations of Hermitian operators taken with respect to the wave function. The laws reveal the following physics: (a) In addition to the external field, each electron experiences an internal field whose components are representative of a specific property of the system such as the correlations due to the Pauli exclusio…
We develop a framework that provides a few-mode master equation description of the interaction between a single quantum emitter and an arbitrary electromagnetic environment. The field quantization requires only the fitting of the spectral density, obtained through classical electromagnetic simulations, to a model system involving a small number of lossy and interacting modes. We illustrate the power and validity of our approach by describing the population and electric field dynamics in the spontaneous decay of an emitter placed in a complex hybrid plasmonic-photonic structure.