Bright and Dark States of Light: The quantum Origin of Classical Interference

Abstract

Classical theory asserts that several electromagnetic waves cannot interact with matter if they interfere destructively to zero, whereas quantum mechanics predicts a nontrivial light-matter dynamics even when the average electric field vanishes. Here we show that in quantum optics classical interference emerges from collective bright and dark states of light, \textit{i.e.}, entangled superpositions of multi-mode photon-number states. This makes it possible to explain wave interference using the particle description of light and the superposition principle for linear systems.

5 pages, 1 figures

References in corpus (3)

• A Quantum Network Node with Crossed Optical Fibre Cavities
• Exotic Looped Trajectories of Photons in Three-Slit Interference
• Universal quantum computation using atoms in cross-cavity systems

Cited by in corpus (5)

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• Dark-state engineering in Fock-state lattices
• Dynamics of Light Localization via Coherent Control: The Interplay of Transmission, Absorption and Disorder in Photonic Crystals
• Photonic Energy-Coherence Theorem and Experimental Validations
• Quantum Origin of Diffraction from Bright and Dark States