Quantum optics

Quantum optics is where you stop treating light as a classical wave and start asking what photons really are — building up the quantized electromagnetic field, then using it to understand how atoms and light actually exchange energy in regimes where semiclassical pictures break down. You'll work through coherent and squeezed states, photon statistics, and the Jaynes-Cummings world of cavity QED, culminating in a computational project and presentation rather than a traditional final. It's a graduate-level companion to quantum mechanics and electrodynamics, and the conceptual groundwork for anything you'd later do in quantum information, AMO experiments, or laser physics research.