Hartmann special issue

[Marlan Scully]

Hi Yuri and Zoe,

 

Here is the stuff Dr. Scully asked me to type up. I include as text in email because I didn't know what format was best for you and figured you could cut and paste as is best for you. Also I don't the guys first name (Sfen??) or which lake Dr. Scully is referring to.

 

Sincerely,

Kim

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One of recalls with pleasure learning the ins and outs of photon echo technology while sail boating with Sfen (SP?) Hartmann on lake Komo (sp?) in 1967. Then as now the photon echo technique was a fascinating corner of quantum optics and this continues to be true even to this day.

Another example of the subtlety and intricacy of quantum optical physics is born out by the fact that the experiments by Charlie Roads at MIT on trying to see photon echo in gases were discontinued because it was thought by many that there would be no photon echo in gases since there was no time reversal of the center of mass motion of the atoms upon exposure to the second that is to the pi pulse. This was an interesting problem which I recall understanding while sitting in a seminar at MIT and was published shortly there after. In particular it is interesting to note that the angular distribution of the radiated echo field is not identical to what one obtains in an inhomogeneously broaden solid such as ruby. This is spelled out in the next couple of paragraphs. After that we turn to an interesting question which we are not able to find in the literature. Namely the shape of the echo pulse given an arbitrary input pulse and a delta function pi pulse. We are not able to find this in the literature and would therefore like to publish this along with our other musings on photon echo in honor of Sfen's (sp?) great accomplishments in physics and the enjoyments that we have experienced through his contributions to quantum optics and related subjects.