Bücher der Reihe Optical Physics and Engineering

This book is an account of the manner in which the optical phenomena observed from solids relate to their fundamental properties. Several abbreviated chapters appear mainly to indicate the importance of their contents in optical properties research and to indicate recently published books that provide ample coverage.

The past decade has seen a major resurgence in optics research and the teaching of optics throughout the major universities both in this country and abroad.

Although much work has been performed on measure ments and interpretation of light absorption by opaque or nearly opaque solids, it is surprising to note that until recently relatively little reliable experimental data, and much less theoretical work was available on the nature of transparent solids.

During the decade there were many developments in laser research and numerous applications of the laser were made in fields of science and engineering.

Some of the volumes in the Series will be devoted to the optical properties of materials, theories of the detailed mechanisms of absorption, reflection, and nonlinea r phenomena, and electro-optical coefficients.

With the advent of lasers, numerous applications of it such as optical information processing, holography, and optical communication have evolved. Chapters 4--8 discuss the more important aspects of contemporary physical optics, namely, diffraction, coherence, Fourier optics, and holog raphy.

This book is intended for upperclass college students as an introduction to the growing field of coherent optics and to the increasing number of its applications, and also for those versed in other fields who wish to gain per spective and insight without detailed calculations.

The emergence of fibre optics as a commercially viable technology oc curred barely ten years ago; With this readership in mind, the theory has been presented in as simple a manner as possible and emphasis has been placed on the description of typical applications and the manufacturing techniques of the technology.

The content of this monograph stems from the writer's early involvement with the design of a series of television camera tubes: the orthicon, the image orthicon and the vidicon.

This book provides an account of modern aspects relating far infrared radiation to properties of solids; They also serve to provide considerable introductory material for the remaining chap ters which deal with various areas that offer theoretical treat ments utilizing and understanding far infrared properties of solids.

The propagation of electromagnetic waves in "square-law" media, i.e., media characterized by a quadratic spatial variation of the dielectric constant, has been a favorite subject of investigation in electromagnetic theory. The present book aims at presenting a unified view of important aspects of our knowledge of inhomogeneous optical waveguides.