This century has seen the development of technologies for manipulating and controlling matter and light at the level of individual photons and atoms, a realm in which physics is fully quantum-mechanical. The dominant experimental technology is the laser, and the theoretical paradigm is quantum optics.

The Quantum World of Ultra-Cold Atoms and Light is a trilogy, which presents the quantum optics way of thinking and its applications to quantum devices. This book — The Physics of Quantum-Optical Devices — provides a comprehensive treatment of theoretical quantum optics. It covers applications to the optical manipulation of the quantum states of atoms, laser cooling, continuous measurement, quantum computers and quantum processors, superconducting systems and quantum networks. The subject is consistently formulated in terms of quantum stochastic techniques, and a systematic and thorough development of these techniques is a central part of the book. There is also a compact overview of the ideas of quantum information theory.

The main aim of the book is to present the theoretical techniques necessary for the understanding of quantum optical devices, with special attention to those devices used in quantum information processing and quantum simulation. Although these techniques were developed originally for the optical regime, they are also applicable to electromagnetic radiation from the microwave realm to the ultra-violet, and for atomic systems, Josephson junction systems, quantum dots and nano-mechanical systems.