Temporal beam splitter and temporal interference

Abstract

The effect of photon beam splitting in a time-varying medium is described by classical and quantum theoretical models. It generalizes the concept of time refraction, introduced recently by the authors as a natural extrapolation of the usual concepts of refraction and reflection into the time domain. Total time reflection is shown to exist. A sequence of time refraction processes is shown to lead to temporal interference effects. The concept of temporal beam splitter is introduced. Bogoliubov transformations for the temporal beam splitter are derived. Resonant amplification of light by change in time in the optical medium is shown to exist.

Electromagnetic wave propagation in spatially homogeneous yet smoothly time-varying dielectric media

“…In the limiting case τ → 0, moreover, our general treatment confirms the results of Refs. [34,37,41,61] as Γ (z) → 1/z for |z| → 0, but disagrees with Ref. [62] where the authors derive incorrect coefficients despite using the same continuity conditions as Eq.…”

Experimental quantum cosmology in time-dependent optical media

“…Our treatment closely follows the same approach proposed by Mendonça et al, in the context of what has been called 'time refraction', i.e. the interaction of light with a time varying boundary at a fixed position in space [25]. By considering a simplified square-shaped wave and imposing continuity conditions on the displacement vector at the time boundaries (i.e.…”

A quantum optical shutter

“…For convenience, units were chosen so that the magnetic permeability and the speed of light are unity. Several people have studied quantum fields with timedependent metrics, boundaries or dielectrics [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26]. In our field-theoretic calculations we follow Law's 'frozen mode' formulation [16].…”

“…Yablonovitch [10], Hizhnyakov [13] and Mendonça et al [25] have investigated the quantum emission in an infinite medium with a time-dependent refractive index using Maxwell's equations. They interpreted this infinite-medium model as a non-linear optical equivalent of an accelerating mirror.…”