Quantum Optics 1: Single Photons (École Polytechnique)

This is one of the most highly rated quantum physics courses on Coursera, co-taught by Alain Aspect, who shared the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics for his experiments with entangled photons. The course introduces the quantization of light and the formalism needed to understand modern quantum optics research, working from classical electromagnetism toward a genuinely quantum description of the electromagnetic field. It is free to audit on Coursera.

The central insight of the course is that there exist quantum states of light with no classical analogue, and that a single photon can exhibit both particle and wave behaviour depending on how it is measured. You learn to describe these states formally, to reason about photon statistics, and to connect the mathematics to real laboratory demonstrations of wave-particle duality. The course closes by linking single-photon sources to emerging quantum technologies such as quantum cryptography and quantum communication.

Who is this for?

Physics and engineering students, and working scientists, who want a rigorous foundation in quantum optics from one of the field’s defining figures. This is not a popular-science overview: it is a real intermediate physics course with mathematical content.

Prerequisites

Strong foundations in basic quantum mechanics and classical electromagnetism are required. Familiarity with complex numbers, linear algebra, and differential equations is assumed throughout.