Quantum Mechanics in the Single-Photon Laboratory (Second Edition)

This book is valuable for laboratory developers, researchers and teachers who would like to recreate a similar suite of experiments for students and early career researchers. These experiments enliven theoretical descriptions of key ideas from quantum information and quantum computing, providing accessible means to generate, manipulate and measure quantum states, and understand their implications for the foundations of quantum mechanics. This new edition features additional experiments related to quantum entanglement and non-local quantum erasure and has restructured previous descriptions. Data processing in an open-source language is described. The appendix on programming FGPAs is considerably enhanced.

Key Features:

• Worked examples showing basic calculations for computing probabilities from projective measurements, the effect of unitary operators on states, and computing density matrices, expectation values, fidelities, and purities.
• An intuitive description of ideas from quantum information and quantum optics.
• Correlating experimental data, which is statistical in nature, with predictions of quantum optical theory.
• Experiments can be virtually recreated using data from real experiments to manipulate, compute and plot expectation values, errors, density matrices etc.
• Each chapter begins with an introduction and discusses the placement of the chapter's material in the wider scheme.