Accession Number:

AD0607104

Title:

ON THE QUANTUM MECHANICAL ASPECTS OF THE WAVESHAPE OF ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION.

Descriptive Note:

Technical rept. no. 7,

Corporate Author:

SYRACUSE UNIV RESEARCH INST N Y

Personal Author(s):

• Lachs,Gerard

Report Date:

1964-09-08

Pagination or Media Count:

8.0

Abstract:

Previous work of this contract on the waveshape aspects of light from a classical point of view led to an interest to investigate the quantum mechanical aspects of the waveshape of light. This work contains some results of this investigation. One of the results obtained is an upper bound on the channel capacity where the only noise in the channel is due to the zero point field. The P-representation of a general state in terms of the coherent states is utilized to obtain the probability densities of the in-phase component, quadrature component, envelope, and the number of photons of the field. This is done for thermal radiation and for radiation which is a mixture of thermal radiation and coherent radiation with the result that the thermal radiation behaves as pure Gaussian noise while the coherent radiation behaves as a classical signal. The quantum mechanical formalism is utilized to obtain the rules of superposition for a large class of fields. The results show that the signal part can be treated classically and the noise part is nearly the same as would be found from the classical superposition of noise.

Descriptors:

• ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION
• SIGNAL LIGHTS
• NOISE
• INFORMATION THEORY
• FIELD THEORY
• OSCILLATORS
• HARMONIC GENERATORS

Subject Categories:

Distribution Statement:

APPROVED FOR PUBLIC RELEASE