Author Description

Over the last few decades, optics has undergone impressive development, in both its applied and fundamental aspects. The quantum aspects of light have been explored both as test benches for understanding the strangeness of the quantum world (entanglement, quantum aspects of measurement, etc.) and with an eye to their potential applications in the domains of information and metrology. There has been major progress in the understanding of the specific quantum aspects of the interaction between light and matter, with applications to the design of quantum memories, and in the generation of highly non-classical states of light, such as 'Schrödinger cat' states. Single photons are now routinely produced by nano-emitters or micro-emitters such as single molecules on surfaces, vacancies in crystals, and quantum dots. The micrometre and nanometre scale is also the privileged range where fluctuations of electromagnetic fields manifest themselves through the Casimir force, a domain that has been very actively investigated in the last few years. Even the domain of classical optics, ruled by the venerable Maxwell equations, has recently seen many exciting new developments, especially in the area of nano-optics.