Quantum optics

Quantum optics is where you stop treating light as a classical wave and start taking the photon seriously as a quantum object, building up the machinery — field quantization, coherent and squeezed states, photon statistics — needed to describe experiments that ordinary electrodynamics simply cannot explain. Most of the term is spent on how quantized light couples to atoms, working through the Rabi and Jaynes-Cummings models, cavity QED, and three-level effects like EIT and STIRAP, before closing with open-system decoherence and master equations. Assessment leans on a project and a presentation rather than exams, so you spend real time reading current literature and writing it up. Coming out of standard quantum mechanics and E&M, this is the natural bridge into modern AMO, quantum information, and laser-cooling research.