QUANTUM OPTICS AS A RELATIVISTIC THEORY OF LIGHT

In analogy with Bohm's elucidation of special relativity, in this pape r we criticize the Copenhagen interpretation and try to reinterpret qu antum theory in the light of new evidence of quantum optics. In doing this, we are led to regard the real photon as only expressing an eleme ntal relationship established between a quantized light field and a de tector in the actual detection processes. With this kind of relational approach to quantum physics, new concepts are then needed to describe physical phenomena, and the mathematical structure of quantum theory of radiation is viewed as a conceptual map, in the same way as the Min kowski diagram in Einstein's special relativity, which already has the perspective of the observer implicit in it.