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I understand ideas coming from Optics, such as the concept of frequency chirp and instantaneous frequency, and their use in nonlinear optics. However, I am struggling in giving them an intuitive quantum interpretation in terms of photons, linking the classical description (that is typical, for example, of high intensity ultrashort laser pulses) with a quantum interpretation of the same phenomena.

As far as I know, a laser pulse can be written as: $$ E(t) =A(t) e^{iω_0t}$$ where $A(t) $ is the envelope of the pulse and $ω_0$ the carrier frequency. Fourier transforming this expression, we can obtain the spectrum of the pulse: it will be centered around the frequency $ω_0$ and its shape will be determined by the Fourier transform of the envelope. In a short pulse, therefore, many different frequencies can be present and, in my intuitive mental representation of this phenomenon, the pulse will be composed by many different photons, each one with a frequency belonging to the spectrum, and the number of photons at that frequency will be proportional to the intensity of that spectral component.

The first problems arises when I consider the concepts of frequency chirp and of transform limited pulse. As far as I know, a transform limited pulse is the shortest pulse that can be obtained with a certain spectrum, while in chirped pulses the components at different frequency will have different arrival times, determining a delay between the various components that will make the pulse considered longer than the associated transform limited one. As a consequence of these considerations, I am thinking that in a transform limited pulse the photons at all the different frequencies of the spectrum will be spreaded over the whole pulse (that will be shorter), while if the pulse is chirped we will have regions of the pulse (both in time and in space) in which photons at a certain frequency are more present (are measured with an higher probability?) with respect to photons at a different one, thus determining a longer pulse. Is this representation meaningful and/or correct? Is there any way to obtain an intuitive quantum description that is coherent with the classical one?

The second problem comes from the concept of instantaneous frequency, that is defined as the temporal derivative of the phase of the pulse, thus being intimately related to the fact that we are considering a pulse with a certain envelope in time. If the previous consideration on chirped pulses is correct, I would like to intuitively represent the idea of instantaneous frequency as the frequency associated to the photons that would be more probable to be measured in a given instant of time in the pulse. Photons at a certain frequency, in a chirped pulse, will thus be measured with an higher probability in the portion of the pulse in which their frequency corresponds to the instantaneous frequency. Is this representation correct? What is the physical meaning of the instantaneous frequency? How is the concept of carrier frequency be related to this intuitive quantum representation?

This question arises from the fact that in university courses on nonlinear optics several phenomena, such as sum frequency generation, difference frequency generation, second harmonic generation, four-wave mixing and optical Kerr effect are represented in terms of photons at a given frequency (usually, the carrier frequency of the beam considered; is it because it is the more probable one for that pulse?), while to demonstrate them we usually use quantum arguments involving quantities such as the frequency chirp and the instantaneous frequency.

JackI
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  • " "bunch of photons" localized in a certain region of space and time and at the carrier frequency. "The individual photons move with velocity c and space time localization must concern "zillions of bunches", for localized light bunches,no? – anna v Nov 28 '18 at 15:10
  • @annav Yes, I used a bad expression for referring to many many many photons. – JackI Nov 28 '18 at 15:59
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    @JackI I recently posted a question-and-answer (https://physics.stackexchange.com/q/443760/206691) that explicitly solves a model of a massless quantum scalar field (a proxy for the quantum EM field) driven by a classical "current." The current is an arbitrary function of time and space except that it's limited to a finite time-interval, so the solution includes chirped waveforms as a special case. It's not a laser model, and it can't address nonlinear optics phenomena, but it does explicitly relate the quantum/classical pictures, so it might help address at least some part of the question. – Chiral Anomaly Dec 01 '18 at 19:46
  • @DanYand Thank you! I'll surely take a look and try to find similarities with what I am asking! – JackI Dec 01 '18 at 19:58
  • @DanYand I've taken a look at the question/answer you linked, and it seems really interesting! Unfortunately, being an engineer and not having ever had a proper course on QFT or Quantum optics, I am not able to fully understand it (again, my problem is to pass from mathematics to intuition). Probably, in my head the idea of an EM wave is more similar to an ensemble of classical particle, while I should rethink everything in term of a coherent superposition of states for a many body system (likely what we have in the density matrix formalism, maybe). If you would like to share your... – JackI Dec 01 '18 at 21:12
  • ... calculations, I'll surely try my best to understand them and see whether I can find a way of improving my physical intuition! – JackI Dec 01 '18 at 21:13

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I wonder whether this is a case where you have a physical intuition about photons which isn't quite working.

If we say that 'a photon' has frequency $\omega$ (and energy $\hbar \omega$) then we are saying that the term 'a photon' refers to an excitation of the modes of the electromagnetic field, such that modes at frequency $\omega$ are involved, in a superposition of whatever directions and polarizations may be relevant, in an eigenstate of the photon number operator ($\hat{a}_\omega^\dagger \hat{a}_\omega$) with eigenvalue equal to 1. The point for your question is that if the mode under consideration is truly monochromatic then it has infinite extension in space. Just like a monochromatic classical wave, it cannot be localised at one place. So each photon is spread out very widely: infinitely widely.

With a chirped laser pulse you have a collection of photons, i.e. mode excitations, and to the degree that you take each mode to be monochromatic, to that same degree you must allow that such a mode must be extended in time and therefore in space as well. The modes all overlap and all of them are present at any instant of time in the pulse. In this respect it is just like Fourier analysis of a chirped pulse of some classical wave. So photons of all frequencies are present at all times (if you insist on associating a precise frequency with each photon).

You can, if you prefer, analyse the field differently, and express it by a wavelet transform instead of a Fourier transform. Then you might want to use the term 'a photon' for each wavelet. Such photons would not be monochromatic, and now they would not all be present all the time.

I hope this helps. If I misunderstood what the issue was, then sorry for that.

Andrew Steane
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  • Thank you for your answer! Therefore, if I understand your point, I should just give up trying to give an intuitive interpretation, should not I? The part that is still missing is: what is the difference between a chirped pulse and a transform limited one? Is there a thing such that the instantaneous frequency? – JackI Nov 30 '18 at 07:21
  • I would not give up the search for helpful intuition! 2. You can have a chirped pulse which is not transform limited, and a chirped pulse which is transform limited. In the first case $T \Delta \omega$ is larger than the minimum value (approx 1), for example owing to a noisy component. 3. 'instantaneous frequency' means whatever the person using the phrase means by it (when they are pushed to give a definition); I wouldn't rule it out completely but simply attach a caution.
  • – Andrew Steane Nov 30 '18 at 09:43