Appendix H: treats the interaction between a light beam and a linear optical medium. This first part considers the propagation of a light beam in a sample of two-level atoms using a semiclassical approach, calculates the index of refraction of the medium and its gain when there is population inversion, and losses when the ground state is populated. It then treats in a full quantum way linear attenuation or amplification, for which the "3dB penalty" on the signal-to-noise ratio is derived from basic quantum principles. Finally, it considers the input–output relation for the two input modes of a linear beamplitter, an important example of a symplectic map.

Experimental chapter devoted to quantum observables endowed with continuously varying quantum fluctuations, such as position and momentum, quadrature operators, or phase and amplitude of electromagnetic fields . It shows that one can manipulate this quantum noise by generating squeezed states of light, always within the limits imposed by the Heisenberg inequality, and create strong correlations between these observables to conditionally generate quantum states having intensity quantum fluctuations below the "shot noise" limit imposed by the existence of vacuum fluctuations. Describes an experiment dealing with macroscopic mechanical oscillators displaying motional squeezing below the zero point fluctuations, and another one dealing with macroscopic superconducting exhibiting a whole spectrum of strongly nonclassical states, generated by using the strong anharmonicity of the Josephson potential.

The focus in this chapter is on intensity-dependent changes in the refractive index of a GRIN medium, responsible for the Kerr effect. In Section 5.1, we consider self-focusing of an optical beam inside a GRIN medium. Pulsed beams are considered in Section 5.2, where we derive a nonlinear propagation equation and discuss the phenomena of self- and cross-phase modulations. Section 5.3 is devoted to modulation instability and the formation of multimode solitons. Intermodal nonlinear effects are considered in Section 5.4 with emphasis on four-wave mixing and stimulated Raman scattering. Nonlinear applications discussed in Section 5.5 include supercontinuuum generation, spatial beam cleanup, and second harmonic generation.