Alladi Ramakrishnan Hall

Light Coherence and Quantum Mechanics

N. D. Hari Dass

TIFR-TCIS, Hyderabad

Starting from the standard treatment of Young’s double-slit experiment, I shall discuss the modern viewpoints and introduce various degrees of coherence of light. I shall describe in detail both the classical and the quantum descriptions of the Hanbury-Twiss intensity interference and its deep consequences. I shall then describe variants of the Hanbury-Twiss effect and the notions of bunching and antibunching. I shall conclude by discussing the implications of all these interference experiments for our understanding of quantum mechanics, and by identifying some future directions.