At the Quantum Optics Laboratory at University of Oslo we wish to advance the concepts and models of light. In physics, the wave-particle duality of light has been the most widely accepted interpretation for almost 100 years now, but this approach forces us to work with light on different conceptual levels in different circumstances, the relevant representations being sometimes in direct conflict with each other.
We believe it is due time to examine closer whether there is a model which may yield more holistic and harmonic desciption of light than the one we have today. The last thirty years very active research on different properties of light has taken place, and thus today we have much richer experiences and more empirical material to make use of when models and interpretations are being discussed. A much more open attitude within the scientic community today than few decades ago also increases the chance for making signifcant progress in the nearest future.
"Light" is usually perceived as a uniform phenomenon. Modern research does not support unambiguously such a view, because it seems that light can occur in several different forms. For the time being one has distinguished between classical and non-classical forms of light, where the non-classical ones are characterized e.g. as instantiations of so-called anti-bunching phenomena. Furthermore, we distinguish between different kinds of light by referring to their different statistical properties, where the statistics involved is sometimes based on the idea that the photons are indivisible particles. There are obvious problems and inadequacies related to such a description.
We wish to contribute to the work where one develops conceptual pictures and models which may yield an alternative way of portraying different types of light. We wish to take the wave picture as our starting point, but incorporate more -- and more precisely defined -- elements which would serve to give a good description of light's many properties. For instance, one has already seen in the literature an idea (rather vaguely described) that the longitudinal size of a photon equals the coherence length of the light beam. This is an idea we find interesting and want to examine closer how fruitful such approach may be in different circumstances.
In our research group we have the working hypothesis that some of the apparent paradoxes that exist in physics today, related to explanations of double-slit experiments and of entangled photons, possibly may have a much more natural explanation given that we manage to model light better than today. We also think that there might be a close connection between our research area and so-called "Fundamental problems of physics" which have their starting point in interpretations of quantum physics. Therefore, a better approach to light modelling may have more far-reaching consequences than one may at first believe. Working with our problems then becomes even more exciting!
Image originally by Ola Sæther, University of Oslo, but has been colour-manipulated by Arnt Inge Vistnes |