Frontiers In Modern Optics

The year 2015 was designated by the United Nations General Assembly as the Year of Light and Light-based Technologies, and also marks the anniversaries of a number of significant historical events related to light. In 1015, Ibn Al-Haytham published his book of optics; in 1815, Fresnel first proposed the notion that light is actually a wave; James Clerk Maxwell then firmly established this concept with his electromagnetic theory of light propagation; and Einstein announced his discovery of the photoelectric effect, demonstrating that light is made of photons in 1905, followed in 1915 by his general theory of relativity, in which light plays a central role. This book presents lectures from the International School of Physics Enrico Fermi summer school: Frontiers in Modern Optics, held in Varenna, Italy, in June and July 2014. The school attempted to give a broad and modern overview of the field of optics in a series of lectures addressing ongoing topics of research. Subject areas include: nonlinear optics; light as an investigation tool in modern physics; and detection and imaging. A unique feature of the book is that each chapter has been prepared as a collaborative effort between students at the school and lecturers. This approach has proved very successful and may well provide a model for the future.

This book provides a cutting-edge research overview on the latest developments in the field of Optics and Photonics. All chapters are authored by the pioneers in their field and will cover the developments in Quantum Photonics, Optical properties of 2D Materials, Optical Sensors, Organic Opto-electronics, Nanophotonics, Metamaterials, Plasmonics, Quantum Cascade lasers, LEDs, Biophotonics and biomedical photonics and spectroscopy.

In last years increasing attention has been again devoted to interpretations of quantum theory. In the same time interesting quantum optical experiments have been performed using nonlinear optical processes, in particular frequency down conversion, which provided new information about nature of a photon on the basis of interference and correlation (coincidence) phenomena. Such single-photon and twin-photon effects of quantum optics provide new point of view of interpretations of quantum theory and new tests of its principles. The purpose of this book is to discuss these questions. To follow this goal we give brief reviews of principles of quantum theory and of quantum theory of measurement. As a fundamental theoretical tool the coherent state technique is adopted based on a general algebraic treatment, including the de scription of interaction of radiation and matter. Typical quantum behaviour of physical systems is exhibited by nonclassical optical phenomena, which can be examined using photon interferences and correlations. These phenomena are closely related to violation of various classical inequalities and Bell's in equalities. The most important part of this book discusses quantum optical experiments supporting quantum theory. This book may be considered as a continuation of previous monographs by one of the authors on Coherence of Light (Van Nostrand Reinhold, London 1972, second edition D. Reidel, Dordrecht 1985) and on Quantum Statistics of Linear and Nonlinear Optical Phenomena (D. Reidel, Dordrecht 1984, second edition Kluwer, Dordrecht 1991), which may serve as a preparation for reading this book.

Much of what we know about atoms, molecules, and the nature of matter has been obtained using spectroscopy over the last one hundred years or so. In this book we have collected together twenty chapters by eminent scientists from around the world to describe their work at the cutting edge of molecular spectroscopy. These chapters describe new methodology and applications, instrumental developments, and theory which is taking spectroscopy into new frontiers. The range of topics is broad. Lasers are utilized in much of the research, but their applications range from sub-femtosecond spectroscopy to the study of viruses and also to the investigation of art and archeological artifacts. Three chapters discuss work on biological systems and three others represent laser physics. The recent advances in cavity ringdown spectroscopy (CRDS), surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS), two-dimensional correlation spectroscopy (2D-COS), and microwave techniques are all covered. Chapters on electronic excited states, molecular dynamics, symmetry applications, and neutron scattering are also included and demonstrate the wide utility of spectroscopic techniques. * provides comprehensive coverage of present spectroscopic investigations * features 20 chapters written by leading researchers in the field * covers the important role of molecular spectroscopy in research concerned with chemistry, physics, and biology

Since the advent of the laser about 40 years ago, the fields of laser physics and quantum optics have evolved into a major disciplines. The early studies included optical coherence theory and semiclassical and quantum mechanical theories of the laser. More recently many new and interesting effects have been predicted. These include the role of coherent atomic effects in lasing without inversion and electromagnetically induced transparency, atom optics, laser cooling and trapping, teleportation, the single-atom micromaser and its role in quantum measurement theory, to name a few. The International Conference on Laser Physics and Quantum Optics was held in Shanghai, China, from August 25 to August 28,1999, to discuss these and many other exciting developments in laser physics and quantum optics. The international character of the conference was manifested by the fact that scientists from over 13 countries participated and lectured at the conference. There were four keynote lectures delivered by Nobel laureate Willis Lamb, Jr., Profs. H. Walther, A.E. Siegman,and M.O. Scully. In addition, there were 34 invited lectures, 27 contributed oral presentations, and 59 poster papers. We are grateful to all the participants of the conference and the contributors of this volume.

As the editor, I feel extremely happy to present to the readers such a rich collection of chapters authored/co-authored by a large number of experts from around the world covering the broad field of guided wave optics and optoelectronics. Most of the chapters are state-of-the-art on respective topics or areas that are emerging. Several authors narrated technological challenges in a lucid manner, which was possible because of individual expertise of the authors in their own subject specialties. I have no doubt that this book will be useful to graduate students, teachers, researchers, and practicing engineers and technologists and that they would love to have it on their book shelves for ready reference at any time.