This present text has emerged from the lecture notes for a one semester, first year, graduate level course which has been offered yearly since fall 1985 here in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Enrollment in the course, however, has not been limited to first year graduate electrical engineering students, but has included seniors, as well as more advanced students, from a variety of disciplines including other areas of engineering and physics. Although other Physical Optics texts exist, the most up-to-date ones are written primarily...