Kategoria BISAC: Science >> Physics - Optics & Light

Choice Outstanding Title (January 2006)

Since the discovery of the lasers in 1960 and optical fibers in 1970, optics underwent deep changes which accentuated its multi-field character. This work covers essential concepts of comprehension and reports the great progress of current knowledge in optics. The method of presentation is inspired by Richard Feynman, with an emphasis on "telling" optics, rather than deducing it from fundamental laws. For its excellent teaching style, the book received the Arnulf-Francon Award by the French Optical Society. The concepts are formulated in a...

A pulse of light spreads in time as it propagates in a fiber due to the physical phenomenon called dispersion. While dispersion can be deleterious in optical communications systems, it can also be exploited to manage the temporal and spectral shapes of pulses and their interactions with other pulses. Much of dispersion control is realized in optical communications systems with discrete devices - the so-called dispersion compensators, and almost all commercially deployed dispersion compensators today are based on specially designed fibers. This book addresses various aspects of this device...

Optical Micro-Resonators are an exciting new field of research that has gained prominence in the past few years due to the emergence of new fabrication technologies. This book is the first detailed text on the theory, fabrication, and applications of optical micro-resonators, and will be found useful by both graduate students and researchers in the field.

This volume contains five articles presenting reviews of several topics of current research which are likely to be of interest to optical scientists and optical engineers. The first article, by J. Ohtsubo, deals with the dynamics of feedback-induced instability and chaos. The characteristics of semiconductor lasers based on the rate equations, including various laser structures, are reviewed and the effects of optical feedback in semiconductor lasers are then discussed. the general area of the nonlinear interaction of ultrafast pulses with optical and photonic crystal fibres are discussed....

The first article by S. Saltiel, A.A. Sukhorukov and Y.S. Kivshar presents an overview of various types of parametric interactions in nonlinear optics which are associated with simultaneous phase-matching of several optical processes in quadratic non-linear media, the so-called multi-step parametric interactions.
The second article by H.E. Tureci, H.G.L. Schwefel, Ph. Jacquod and A.D. Stone reviews the progress that has been made in recent years in the...

• Historical Overview
• Attosecond Laser Pulses
• History of Conical Refraction
• Particle Concept of Light
• Field Quantization in Optics
• History of Near-Field Optics
• History of...

This volume contains six review articles dealing with topics of current research interest in optics and in related fields. The first article deals with the so-called embedding method, which has found useful applications in the study of wave propagation in random media. The second article presents a review of an interesting class of non-linear optical phenomena which have their origin in the dependence of the complex dielectric constant of some media on the light intensity. These phenomena which include self-focusing, self-trapping and self-modulation have found many applications, for...

This volume presents a review of the research in several areas of modern optics written by experts well-known in the international scientific community. The first chapter discusses properties and methods of production and detection of coherent superpositions of macroscopically distinguishable states of light (the so-called Schrodinger cat states). Chapter two deals with the phase-shift method, which originated in the 1930s, for the analysis of potential-scattering problems in atomic and nuclear physics. Recently this approach has been applied to wave propagation in one-dimensional...

This third revised edition is a considerably rewritten and updated version which now includes all important developments which have taken place...

Moire fringe techniques have expanded considerably over the past decade and are now established as important metrological tools. The main reason for this flourishing expansion is the use of the moire fringe method in the common availability of the laser light. This book covers the major theoretical aspects and applications of the moire technique. A concise description of the formation of moire fringes and their interpretation is presented. A comprehensive review of the most important applications of the moire phenomenon is given. Although some of them are still being refined there are...

Specific changes for this edition...