Emil Wolf - Böcker

The Progress in Optics series contains more than 300 review articles by distinguished research workers, which have become permanent records for many important developments, helping optical scientists and optical engineers stay abreast of their fields.

The first volume of this text was published in 1961, only a few months after the invention of the laser. This event triggered a wealth of developments, many of which were reported in the 240 review articles which were published in this series since its inception. The present volume contains seven articles covering a wide range of subjects. The first article presents a review of various optical effects in spherical and circular micro-cavities capable of supporting high-Q resonant modes (commonly referred to as morphology-dependent resonances (MDRs) or whispering gallery modes (WGMs)). The second presents a comprehensive review of the theory and practice of optical disk data storage. Other articles include discussions on delay control systems for wideband phased array antennas, and quantum statistical properties of optical beams interacting in nonlinear couplers.

The seven reviews articles presented in this volume cover a broad range of subjects. The first article is concerned with the use of active optics in modern, large telescopes. The second article discusses variational methods used in nonlinear fibre optics and in related fields. The article by O. Keller which follows deals with a topic of historical interest, presenting a account of researches of the Danish physicist L.V. Lorenz who in 1867 established the electrodynamic theory of light, independently of the work of James Clerk Maxwell. The fourth article is concerned with the canonical quantum description of light propagation in dielectric media. The fifth article by D. Dragoman describes the similarities and the differences between classical optics and quantum mechanics in phase space. The article by R. Boyd and D. Gauthier which follows, summarizes research on pulse propagation effects in resonant material system. The concluding article by A. Torre is concerned with the fractional Fourier transform and some of it applications in optics. It is clear that the articles in this volume cover a broad range of subjects, some of which are likely to be of interest to many scientists concerned with optical theory or with optical devices.

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. In particular, ultrafast pulse measurements, pulse shaping and pulse control are discussed. transient optical phenomena that take place in the spatial-temporal dynamics of ultrashort pulses. The interplay of diffractive and dispersive phenomena is examined. They include coupled processes of amplitude and phase reshaping, spectral variations and polarity reversal for different types of light pulses. Reflection and refraction effects that take place at the interface between media with time-dependent dielectric susceptibilities are also discussed. principles of optical coherence tomography (OCT). This is a relatively new discipline with important potential applications in macropscopic, microscopic and endoscopic imaging. The article begins with a brief summary of the field and then describes various OCT interferometer configurations and discusses basic sample signal extraction techiques. The article also covers subjects such as contrast generation techniques, resolution, signal processing techiques for image display, image enhancement, speckle suppression and OCT detection sensitivity. A description of optical delay lines used in OCT is also presented. concerned with modulation instability (MI) of electromagnetic waves in inhomogeneous and in discrete media. The article pays special attention to the MI of electromagnetic waves in nonlinear optical fibres with periodic amplification, dispersion and birefringence. The MI in random media is also covered. Other topics discussed in this article are discrete nonlinear systems with cubic, quadratic and vectorial interactions and nonlinear optical systems such as tunnel-coupled filters. Some of the readers may note that authors from six different countries have contributed to this volume, thus helping to maintain the international character of this series.

A volume in the Progress in Optics series, the papers in this book cover a range of topics, including: anamorphic beam shaping for laser and diffuse light; ultra-fast all-optical switching in optical networks; generation of dark hollow beams and their application; and two-photon lasers.

In the 50 years since the first volume of Progress in Optics was published, optics has become one of the most dynamic fields of science. The volumes in this series that have appeared up to now contain more than 300 review articles by distinguished research workers, which have become permanent records for many important developments, helping optical scientists and optical engineers stay abreast of their fields.

In the�50�years since the first volume of Progress in Optics was published, optics has become one of the most dynamic fields of science. The volumes in this series that have appeared up to now contain more than 300 review articles by distinguished research workers, which have become permanent records for many important developments, helping optical scientists and optical engineers stay abreast of their fields.

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 example in fibre optics devices, signal processing and computer technology. The next article is concerned with gap solitons which are electromagnetic field structures which can exist in nonlinear media that have periodic variation in their linear optical properties, with periodicities of the order of the wavelength of light. Both qualitative and quantitative descriptions of gap solitons are presented and some experimental schemes for their detection in the laboratory are discussed. The fourth article describes methods for the determination of optical phase from phase-modulated images. These methods have found applications in plasma diagnostics, in connection with flow characterisation and in the design of new optical instruments. The final article reviews developments relating to imaging, through turbulence in the atmosphere. It looks at the state-of-the-art of our understanding of this subject and discusses the most important methods that are presently employed to compensate for image distortion caused by atmospheric turbulence.

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 inhomogeneous media. Chapter three is concerned with the statistical properties of dynamic laser speckles that arise from scattering objects with rough surfaces undergoing translation and rotation. A moving phase-screen model is employed, which gives a relatively simple formulation of the theory and a clear picture of the time-varying speckle phenomenon. The fourth chapter presents a review of the more important theoretical and experimental results relating to optics of multilayer systems with randomly rough boundaries. The significant theoretical approaches which make it possible to interpret experimental data involving such systems are described, and relevant methods for optical characterization of systems of this kind are outlined. The last chapter presents an account of a theory of the photon transport through turbid media.

Volume XXXV contains six review articles.The first article is a discussion on transverse light patterns in non-linear media, lasers and wide aperture interferometers. The next article deals with the detection and spectroscopic studies of single molecules in transparent solids at low temperature. The isolated spectral line of a single molecule makes it possible to perform basic quantum measurements, and allows probing in unprecedented detail of the surrounding solid matrix. The article also includes some suggestions for future research in this field.The next article reviews interferometric techniques for retrieving multispectral images with a large number of spectral channels. Special attention is paid to the theory of interferometric multispectral imaging which unifies the theories of coherence based image retrieval and spectrum recovery. Various techniques are compared, especially in terms of signal-to-noise-ratio.