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Light exerts physical pressure on objects in its path, a phenomenon which can be deduced by Maxwell's equations, but can be more easily explained by the particle nature of light: photons strike and transfer their momentum. Light pressure is equal to the power of the light beam divided by c, the speed of light.
(Beams of light also exhibit properties described as orbital angular momentum of light). The angular momentum of the photon has two possible values, either +ħ or −ħ. These two possible values correspond to the two possible pure states of circular polarization. Collections of photons in a light beam may have mixtures of these two values; a ...
The use of statistical mechanics is fundamental to the concepts of quantum optics: light is described in terms of field operators for creation and annihilation of photons—i.e. in the language of quantum electrodynamics. A frequently encountered state of the light field is the coherent state, as introduced by E.C. George Sudarshan in 1960.
An example of light exhibiting sub-Poissonian statistics is squeezed light. Recently researchers have shown that sub-Poissonian light can be induced in a quantum dot exhibiting resonance fluorescence. [5] A technique used to measure the sub-Poissonian structure of light is a homodyne intensity correlation scheme. [6]
These areas of optical science typically relate to the electromagnetic or quantum properties of light but do include other topics. A major subfield of modern optics, quantum optics, deals with specifically quantum mechanical properties of light. Quantum optics is not just theoretical; some modern devices, such as lasers, have principles of ...
By definition, visible light is the part of the EM spectrum the human eye is the most sensitive to. Visible light (and near-infrared light) is typically absorbed and emitted by electrons in molecules and atoms that move from one energy level to another. This action allows the chemical mechanisms that underlie human vision and plant photosynthesis.
A basic distinction is between isotropic materials, which exhibit the same properties regardless of the direction of the light, and anisotropic ones, which exhibit different properties when light passes through them in different directions. The optical properties of matter can lead to a variety of interesting optical phenomena.
In this case, the electrons will absorb the energy of the light wave and increase their energy state, often moving outward from the nucleus of the atom into an outer shell or orbital. The atoms that bind together to make the molecules of any particular substance contain a number of electrons (given by the atomic number Z in the periodic table ).