Principles of Laser Spectroscopy and Quantum Optics is an essential textbook for graduate students studying the interaction of optical fields with atoms. It also serves as an ideal reference text for researchers working in the fields of laser spectroscopy and quantum optics. The book provides a rigorous introduction to the prototypical problems of radiation fields interacting with two- and three-level atomic systems. It examines the interaction of radiation with both atomic vapors and condensed matter systems, the density matrix and the Bloch vector, and applications involving linear absorption and saturation spectroscopy. Other topics include hole burning, dark states, slow light, and coherent transient spectroscopy, as well as atom optics and atom interferometry. In the second half of the text, the authors consider applications in which the radiation field is quantized. Topics include spontaneous decay, optical pumping, sub-Doppler laser cooling, the Heisenberg equations of motion for atomic and field operators, and light scattering by atoms in both weak and strong external fields. The concluding chapter offers methods for creating entangled and spin-squeezed states of matter. Instructors can create a one-semester course based on this book by combining the introductory chapters with a selection of the more advanced material. A solutions manual is available to teachers.

Preface xvChapter 1: Preliminaries 1
Chapter 2: Two-Level Quantum Systems 17
Chapter 3: Density Matrix for a Single Atom 56
Chapter 4: Applications of the Density Matrix Formalism 83
Chapter 5: Density Matrix Equations: Atomic Center-of-Mass Motion, Elementary Atom Optics, and Laser Cooling 99
Chapter 6: Maxwell-Bloch Equations 120
Chapter 7: Two-Level Atoms in Two or More Fields: Introduction to Saturation Spectroscopy 136
Chapter 8: Three-Level Atoms: Applications to Nonlinear Spectroscopy-Open Quantum Systems 159
Chapter 9: Three-Level Atoms: Dark States, Adiabatic Following, and Slow Light 184
Chapter 10: Coherent Transients 206
Chapter 11: Atom Optics and Atom Interferometry 242
Chapter 12: The Quantized, Free Radiation Field 280
Chapter 13: Coherence Properties of the Electric Field 312
Chapter 14: Photon Counting and Interferometry 339
Chapter 15: Atom-Quantized Field Interactions 358
Chapter 17: Optical Pumping and Optical Lattices 402
Chapter 18: Sub-Doppler Laser Cooling 422
Chapter 19: Operator Approach to Atom-Field Interactions: Source-Field Equation 453
Chapter 20: Light Scattering 474
Chapter 21: Entanglement and Spin Squeezing 492
References 506
Bibliography 507
Index 509