Quantum optics may be viewed as the optics of manifestly nonclassical
waves, such as matter waves, but it may also be understood as the
nonclassical optics of any wave. The latter definition is more universal
as it involves the quantum effect
of particle statistics on wave phenomena such as interference, with a
central role played by vacuum field modes. In this seminar, I will
present several quantum optics experiments in which photon statistics
are altered, or squeezed, away from the vacuum noise,
for 1 to 60 modes of the same optical parametric oscillator, with
applications to secure communication, high-precision interferometry, and
the generation of continuous-variable cluster states for a record size
(if not yet record fidelity) quantum computer.