Abstract
The electromagnetic (radiation) fields are determined by two vector fields, the electric field and magnetic induction, which are subject to fluctuations. Even in a highly stabilized laser, the phase and amplitude of the resulting coherent electromagnetic field exhibit temporal fluctuations. There are several reasons why the radiation field fluctuates. Much of these irregularities arise from random and uncontrolled changes that occur in any radiation source and lead to random changes in the radiation frequency and amplitude. Even if all these sources of fluctuations are eliminated, radiation fields are still subject to fluctuations arising from the laws of quantum physics and are never entirely absent. These fluctuations are called quantum fluctuations and impose the (quantum) limit on the precision of any measurements in physics.
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Notes
- 1.
In the language of the stochastic processes, we assume that the intensity of the incident light is not a stochastic variable, and one considers only a single realization of a possible ensemble of optical fields with intensity \(I(\varvec{r},t)\).
- 2.
The intensity I can be defined in different ways: it can be just \(I(\varvec{r},t) =\varvec{E}^{*}\left( \varvec{r},t\right) \cdot \varvec{E}\left( \varvec{r},t\right) \) in [V\(^{2}\)/m\(^{2}\)], or multiplied by \(2\varepsilon _{0}c\) in [W/m\(^{2}\)], or multiplied by \(2\varepsilon _{0}c\lambda \) in [photons/second].
- 3.
The radiation intensity often appears in the literature under different names as the intensity spectrum or excitation spectrum or atomic lineshape.
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Ficek, Z., Tanaś, R. (2017). Quantum Fluctuations and Their Measurements. In: Quantum-Limit Spectroscopy. Springer Series in Optical Sciences, vol 200. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-3740-0_1
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