Optics, Light and Lasers

Preface. 1 Light rays. 1.1 Light rays in human experience. 1.2 Ray optics. 1.3 Reflection. 1.4 Refraction. 1.5 Fermat's principle: the optical path length. 1.6 Prisms. 1.7 Light rays in wave guides. 1.8 Lenses and curved mirrors. 1.9 Matrix optics. 1.10 Ray optics and particle optics. 2 Wave optics. 2.1 Electromagnetic radiation fields. 2.2 Wave types. 2.3 Gaussian beams. 2.4 Polarization. 2.5 Diffraction. 3 Light propagation in matter. 3.1 Dielectric interfaces. 3.2 Complex refractive index. 3.3 Optical wave guides and fibres. 3.4 Light pulses in dispersive materials. 3.5 Anisotropic optical materials. 3.6 Optical modulators. 4 Optical images. 4.1 The human eye. 4.2 Magnifying glass and eyepiece. 4.3 Microscopes. 4.4 Telescopes. 4.5 Lenses: designs and aberrations. 5 Coherence and interferometry. 5.1 Young's double slit. 5.2 Coherence and correlation. 5.3 The double--slit experiment. 5.4 Michelson interferometer: longitudinal coherence. 5.5 Fabry--Perot interferometer. 5.6 Optical cavities. 5.7 Thin optical films. 5.8 Holography. 5.9 Laser speckle (laser granulation). 6 Light and matter. 6.1 Classical radiation interaction. 6.2 Two--level atoms. 6.3 Stimulated and spontaneous radiation processes. 6.4 Inversion and optical gain. 7 The laser. 7.1 The classic system: the He--Ne laser. 7.2 Mode selection in the He--Ne laser. 7.3 Spectral properties of the He--Ne laser. 7.4 Applications of the He--Ne laser. 7.5 Other gas lasers. 7.6 Molecular gas lasers. 7.7 The workhorses: solid--state lasers. 7.8 Selected solid--state lasers. 7.9 Tunable lasers with vibronic states. 8 Laser dynamics. 8.1 Basic laser theory. 8.2 Laser rate equations. 8.3 Threshold--less lasers and microlasers. 8.4 Laser noise. 8.5 Pulsed lasers. 9 Semiconductor lasers. 9.1 Semiconductors. 9.2 Optical properties of semiconductors. 9.3 The hetero structure laser. 9.4 Dynamic properties of semiconductor lasers. 9.5 Laser diodes, diode lasers, laser systems. 9.6 High--power laser diodes. 10 Sensors for light. 10.1 Characteristics of optical detectors. 10.2 Fluctuating opto--electronic quantities. 10.3 Photon noise and detectivity limits. 10.4 Thermal detectors. 10.5 Quantum sensors I: photomultiplier tubes. 10.6 Quantum sensors II: semiconductor sensors. 10.7 Position and image sensors. 11 Laser spectroscopy. 11.1 Laser--induced fluorescence (LIF). 11.2 Absorption and dispersion. 11.3 The width of spectral lines. 11.4 Doppler--free spectroscopy. 11.5 Transient phenomena. 11.6 Light forces. 12 Nonlinear optics I: Optical mixing processes. 12.1 Charged anharmonic oscillators. 12.2 Second--order nonlinear susceptibility. 12.3 Wave propagation in nonlinear media. 12.4 Frequency doubling. 12.5 Sum and difference frequency. 13 Nonlinear optics II: Four--wave mixing. 13.1 Frequency tripling in gases. 13.2 Nonlinear refraction coefficient (optical Kerr effect). 13.3 Self--phase--modulation. Appendix. A Mathematics for optics. A.1 Spectral analysis of fluctuating measurable quantities. A.2 Poynting theorem. B Supplements in quantum mechanics. B.1 Temporal evolution of a two--state system. B.2 Density--matrix formalism. B.3 Density of states. Bibliography. Index.