The purpose of this book is to provide a physical understanding of photons and their properties and applications. Special emphasis is given in the text to photon pairs produced in spontaneous parametric, down-conversion, which exhibit intrinsically quantum mechanical correlations, known as entanglement, and which extend over manifestly macroscopic distances. Such photon pairs are well suited to the physical realization of Einstein-Rosen-Podolsky type experiments, and also make possible such exciting techniques as quantum cryptography and teleportation.

Faithful communication is a necessary precondition for large-scale quantum information processing and networking, irrespective of the physical platform. Thus, the problems of quantum-state transfer and quantum-network engineering have attracted enormous interest over the last years, and constitute one of the most active areas of research in quantum information processing. The present volume introduces the reader to fundamental concepts and various aspects of this exciting research area, including links to other related areas and problems. The implementation of state-transfer schemes and the...

Reflecting the cross-disciplinary nature of the field, this volume covers most aspects of the challenging technique of quantum state transfer and network engineering, offering readers a dynamic introduction to the fundamentals of this hot research topic.