Optics and Lasers

Since this book was first published in 1977, the major advances in optics have been the maturing of optical communications and the development of in tegrated optics. When I was offered the opportunity to prepare a revised edi tion, I decided to add chapters on these disciplines to the original work. This book, which was begun long before I joined the National Bureau of Stand ards, remains a private venture, written, so to speak, in my basement; there is no official connection with the National Bureau of Standards. I have also taken the opportunity to make some corrections and to add several short sections within the body of the earlier text. The most important of these changes include a discussion of group velocity, phase velocity and group index of refraction to anticipate the need for these concepts in Chap. 9; revision of the section on coherent-optical processing, including what is essen tially an optical derivation of the Fourier series; addition of the converging beam optical processor; and addition of a section on laser safety. The bulk of the new material comprises three chapters. The first is Chap. 9, "Optical Waveguides". In this chapter, I develop optical waveguide theory primarily on the basis of ray optics and interference in planar waveguides.