ANALOGIES BETWEEN 2 OPTICAL-SYSTEMS (PHOTON-BEAM SPLITTERS AND LASER-BEAMS) AND 2 QUANTUM-SYSTEMS (THE 2-DIMENSIONAL OSCILLATOR AND THE 2-DIMENSIONAL HYDROGEN-ATOM)

Some striking analogies are exhibited between the lossless quantum-mechanical beam splitter and the following two elementary quantum systems: (1) the two-dimensional isotropic oscillator and (2) the two-dimensional hydrogen atom. For example, we show that the unitary transformation connecting the input and output photon statistics at a lossless 50-50 beam splitter is identical to the transformation connecting the polar and parabolic eigenstates of the two-dimensional (2D) hydrogen atom. A similar connection between (Gaussian) laser beams and the eigenstates of the 2D oscillator is pointed out. These analogies are established by identifying the underlying symmetries of these systems and exploiting them by means of group theory.