Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Notations and acronyms
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Electrons and electromagnetic waves in nanostructures
- 2 Basic properties of electromagnetic waves and quantum particles
- 3 Wave optics versus wave mechanics I
- 4 Electrons in periodic structures and quantum confinement effects
- 5 Semiconductor nanocrystals (quantum dots)
- 6 Nanoplasmonics I: metal nanoparticles
- 7 Light in periodic structures: photonic crystals
- 8 Light in non-periodic structures
- 9 Photonic circuitry
- 10 Tunneling of light
- 11 Nanoplasmonics II: metal–dielectric nanostructures
- 12 Wave optics versus wave mechanics II
- Part II Light–matter interaction in nanostructures
- Author index
- Subject index
12 - Wave optics versus wave mechanics II
from Part I - Electrons and electromagnetic waves in nanostructures
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Notations and acronyms
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Electrons and electromagnetic waves in nanostructures
- 2 Basic properties of electromagnetic waves and quantum particles
- 3 Wave optics versus wave mechanics I
- 4 Electrons in periodic structures and quantum confinement effects
- 5 Semiconductor nanocrystals (quantum dots)
- 6 Nanoplasmonics I: metal nanoparticles
- 7 Light in periodic structures: photonic crystals
- 8 Light in non-periodic structures
- 9 Photonic circuitry
- 10 Tunneling of light
- 11 Nanoplasmonics II: metal–dielectric nanostructures
- 12 Wave optics versus wave mechanics II
- Part II Light–matter interaction in nanostructures
- Author index
- Subject index
Summary
Transfer of concepts and ideas from quantum theory of solids to nanophotonics
In Chapter 3 we discussed that optics played an important role in the development of quantum mechanics at its very early stages. Wave mechanics with respect to classical mechanics has been developed by analogy to wave optics with respect to geometrical optics. A number of similarities were outlined in that chapter between quantum mechanical and electromagnetic phenomena. Many decades later the reverse process happened. The advances in single particle quantum theory of solids that dealt exclusively with analysis of the Schrödinger equation in complex potentials with no collective phenomena and spin effects included, were systematically transferred to electromagnetism, and first of all to wave optics. We have shown the bulk of these effects and phenomena in wave optics of complex structures in Chapters 7–9. The transfer of concepts and phenomena is presented in Table 12.1 with the principal dates indicated. This transfer is a remarkable event in modern science. It is indicative of the useful exchange of ideas between two large fields of physics. In a sense, quantum theory did pay back to optics with high “interest” for originally borrowing optical ideas in the 1920s. It is owing to this transfer that the writing of this very book has become topical.
Among the quantum phenomena listed in Table 12.1, the band theory of solids in terms of electron Bloch functions, conduction band and valence band concepts, Brillouin zones and electron and hole effective mass have been overviewed in detail in Chapter 4.
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- Information
- Introduction to Nanophotonics , pp. 368 - 374Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010