Optics – 5 Edition

Description

The creation of this 5th edition was guided by three overarching imperatives: wherever possible, to improve the pedagogy; to continue to modernize the treatment (e.g., with a bit more on photons, phasors, and Fourier); and to update the content to keep pace with technological advances (e.g., the book now discusses atomic interferometers, and metamaterials). Optics is a fast-evolving field and this edition strives to provide an up-to-date approach to the discipline, all the while focusing mainly on pedagogy. To that end there are several goals: (1) to sustain an appreciation of the central role played by atomic scattering in almost every aspect of Optics; (2) to establish from the outset, the underlying quantum-mechanical nature of light (indeed, of all quantum particles), even as the book is grounded in traditional methodology.
Thus the reader will find electron and neutron diffraction patterns pictured alongside the customary photon images; (3) to provide an early introduction to the powerful perspective of Fourier theory, which has come to be so prevalent in modern-day analysis. Accordingly, the concepts of spatial frequency and spatial period are introduced and graphically illustrated as early as Chapter 2, right along with temporal frequency and period. At the request of student users, I have dispersed throughout the text over one-hundred completely worked-out EXAMPLES that make use of the principles explored in each Section. More than two hundred problems, sans solutions, have been added to the ends of the chapters to increase the available selection of fresh homework questions. A complete teacher’s solutions manual is available upon request. Inasmuch as “a picture is worth a thousand words,” many new diagrams and photographs further enhance the text. The book’s pedagogical strength lies in its emphasis on actually explaining what is being discussed. This edition furthers that approach.