P. L. Knight - Böcker

This book provides a thorough introduction to the interaction of atoms and atomic ions with optical and magnetic fields. Particular emphasis is placed on the wealth of important multilevel effects, where atomic vapours exhibit anisotropic behaviour. As well as covering the classic two-level atom approach to light-atom interactions, a general multi-level formalism is also described in detail, and used to discuss optical pumping, two-dimensional spectroscopy and nonlinear optical dynamics. The final chapter deals with the mechanical effects of light, including the cooling and trapping of atoms. With full theoretical and experimental coverage, and over 250 illustrations, the book will be of great interest to graduate students of laser spectroscopy, quantum electronics and quantum optics, and to researchers in these fields.

This book is concerned with the underlying science and design of laser materials. It emphasizes the principles of crystal-field engineering and discusses the basic physical concepts that determine laser gain and nonlinear frequency conversion in optical crystals. A concise review of the essential underlying science is presented, and the predictive capabilities of crystal-field engineering are developed to show how modification of the symmetry and composition of optical centres can improve laser performance. Applications of the principles of crystal-field engineering to a variety of optical crystals are also discussed in relation to the performances of laser devices. This book will be of considerable interest to physical, chemical and material scientists and to engineers involved in the science and technology of solid state lasers. It will be used by senior undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as by established scientists.

This 1992 book provides a thorough and systematic description of particle field holography. The use of holography to study very small objects in a dynamic volume is a technique of importance for scientists and engineers across a variety of disciplines for obtaining information about the size, shape and velocity of small objects such as dust particles, fuel droplets, raindrops, pollen, bubbles etc. Professor Vikram has made major contributions to the field, and here provides a coherent, comprehensive and self-contained treatment of the theory, practise and applications. The volume is written to satisfy the needs of researchers in the technique, practising engineers dealing with applications, and advanced students in science or engineering departments. All the necessary mathematical formulations, figures and photographs, experimental procedures and results, and literature citations are therefore included.

The scientific and technological importance of lasers has generated great interest in the field of cavity nonlinear optics. This book provides a thorough description of this subject in terms of modern dynamical systems theory. Throughout, the emphasis is on deriving analytical results and highlighting their physical significance. The early chapters introduce the physical models for active and passive cavities. In later chapters, these are applied to a variety of problems in laser theory, optical bistability and parametric oscillators. Subjects covered include scaling laws, Hopf bifurcations, passive Q-switching, and Turing instabilities. Several of the topics treated cannot be found in other books, including swept control parameter dynamics, laser stability, multimode rate equations, and antiphase dynamics. The book stresses the connections between theoretical work and actual experimental results, and will be of great interest to graduate students and researchers in theoretical physics, nonlinear optics, and laser physics.

Low-dimensional semiconductor structures, often referred to as nanocrystals or quantum dots, exhibit fascinating behavior and have a multitude of potential applications, especially in the field of communications. This book examines in detail the optical properties of these structures, giving full coverage of theoretical and experimental results, and discusses their technological applications. The author begins by setting out the basic physics of electron states in crystals (adopting a 'cluster-to-crystal' approach), and goes on to discuss the growth of nanocrystals, absorption and emission of light by nanocrystals, optical nonlinearities, interface effects, and photonic crystals. He illustrates the physical principles with references to actual devices such as novel light-emitters and optical switches.

Quantum mechanics sets fundamental limits on the amount of information one can extract from a system with a single set of measurements. Recent results of new theoretical analyses and optical experiments have given rise to a more complete knowledge of the quantum properties of light. This book gives the first detailed description of this fascinating branch of quantum optics. This self-contained book begins with a description of some key results and tools from quantum optics. The author discusses the quantum mechanical description of simple optical instruments before giving a detailed treatment of quantum tomography. The book concludes with a chapter devoted to the problem of the simultaneous measurement of position and momentum. This book will appeal to graduate students and researchers in quantum optics, as well as anyone interested in the foundations of quantum mechanics or more general problems of quantum measurement.

This 1992 book surveys the field of ultrafast fiber switching devices and systems that have potential processing speeds in excess of 50 gigabits-per-second. The treatment covers basic physical principles, device physics and systems applications. The purpose of the book is to provide a complete tour of the key research issues and approaches in ultrafast switching. Topics covered include routing and logic devices, solitons in optical fibers, and the application of ultrafast gates to telecommunications transmission systems, local area networks and optical computing. The author is a member of the Technical Staff in basic research at AT&T Bell Laboratories, Holmdel, and is excellently positioned to provide this state-of-the-art survey in this exciting and advancing field. The book will be of great value to all researchers and graduate students working in the areas of high-speed electronics, optical data processing, nonlinear guided-wave optics, and photonic switching.

Calculations on lens systems are often marred by the unjustifiable use of the small-angle approximation. This book describes in detail how the ray and wave pictures of lens behaviour can be combined and developed into a theory capable of dealing with the large angles encountered in real optical systems. A distinct advantage of this approach is that Fourier optics appears naturally, in a form valid for arbitrarily large angles. The book begins with extensive reviews of geometrical optiks, eikonal functions and the theory of wave propagation. The propagation of waves through lenses is then treated by exploiting the close connection between eikonal function theory and the stationary phase approximation. Aberrations are then discussed, and the book concludes with various applications in lens design and analysis, including chapters on laser beam propagation and diffractive optical elements. Throughout, special emphasis is placed on the intrinsic limitations of lens performance. The many practical insights it contains, as well as the exercises with their solutions, will be of interest to graduate students as well as to anyone working in optical design and engineering.

Enlarged and updated in 1983, this is the second edition of Dr Steel's popular textbook on interferometry. The text has been revised throughout and major additions have been made to reflect the phenomenal growth of laser techniques and applications. The book provides a general treatment that brings together the many different applications of the interference of light waves, light being used in its most general sense to include all electromagnetic radiation. The applications can cover precise measurement of length, the testing of optical components against a computed hologram, measurements of atmospheric pollution by infrared spectroscopy and many of the methods of radio astronomy and the measurement of size of visible stars. These apparently unrelated methods have a common theory, which the book presents and extends to each main field of application. It shows workers in one field how their problems relate to those in other fields, where they may have been solved already. The book will be found useful by anyone whose work involves one of the many applications of interferometric techniques.

This book describes the Fabry-Perot interferometer and its variants as well as its use, optimisation and applications. The author begins with an historical perspective on the development of the instrument. Because of the quantitative uses of the device, the text tends to be mostly mathematical in its treatment. However, there is also much practical detail on the use and optimization of the Fabry-Perot interferometer and discussion of its classical uses (such as in metrology) and its contemporary applications (such as in lasers). In addition the book contains a comprehensive bibliography summarizing the extensive literature on the subject. This book will appeal both to high-resolution practitioners, such as spectroscopists, and to the laser community, since the Fabrv-Perot is not only an integral part of the laser but is also usea to characterize its optical and spectroscopic behaviour.

There has recently been a rapid growth of activity in nonlinear optics. Effects such as frequency doubling, stimulated Raman scattering, phase conjugation and solitons are of great interest both for their fundamental properties and their many important applications in science and engineering. It is mainly these applications - especially in telecommunications and information processing - that have stimulated the recent surge of activity. This book is a self contained account of the most important principles of nonlinear optics. Assuming only a familiarity with basic mathematics, the fundamentals of nonlinear optics are fully developed from basic concepts. The essential quantum mechanical apparatus is introduced and explained. In later chapters the underlying ideas are illustrated by discussing particular experimental configurations and materials. This book will be an invaluable introduction to the field for beginning graduates in physics or engineering, and will provide an excellent overview and reference work for active researchers in the field.

This 1996 book is a greatly expanded edition of what has become one of the best known introductions to the principles, techniques and applications of optical holography. Where necessary, existing sections have been updated, and two new chapters have been added. After presenting the theory of holographic imaging and the various types of holograms, practical aspects of holography are then covered, as are the production of holograms for display, colour holography and computer generated holograms. A variety of the applications of holography are then discussed in detail, such as high resolution imaging, information storage and processing, vibration analysis, and holographic interferometry. Containing more than 1000 selected references, this book will be invaluable to anyone wishing to learn more about optical holography, as well as to established researchers and engineers in this field.