Reprint of the original, first published in 1872. The publishing house Anatiposi publishes historical books as reprints. Due to their age, these books may have missing pages or inferior quality. Our aim is to preserve these books and make them available to the public so that they do not get lost.
Reprint of the original, first published in 1872. The publishing house Anatiposi publishes historical books as reprints. Due to their age, these books may have missing pages or inferior quality. Our aim is to preserve these books and make them available to the public so that they do not get lost.
I consider teaching to have been one of my greatest privileges in life. I have al ways attemped to make a matter, sometimes difficult, sometimes in constant evolution, simpler and easier to understand. There comes a time then, when one feels the necessity to write and publish a book. For this reason, I have already published (in french) several lecture books on Classical Mechanics, Quantum Mechanics, Matrix Optics, Electroweak Interaction, General Rel ativity and Gravitation, Cosmology. Teaching quantum theory has been a particular delight as its constant evolution and enlargement, embraces all domains of physics. Even if the general layout remains relatively unchanged, the evolution of our understanding of the physical world imposes the in troduction of new approaches. It therefore seemed that a physics textbook, even one with a graduate readership in mind, had to introduce the Dirac Electron Theory and some rudimentary material on quantum field theory. This holds for also for explanations of the spontaneous symmetry breaking of Higgs scalar fields that gives mass to the bosons involved in short range interactions. We have deliberately cut down on material on some "classical" topics of quantum theory to make space for less known methods. Examples of the latter include the Feynman path integral "3rd quantization" and the interpretation of quantum mechanics in terms of phase focusing coherence.
This book is aimed at studying the scattering of monochromatic radiation in plane inhomogeneous media. We are dealing with the media whose optical properties depend on a single spatial coordinate, namely of a depth. The most widely known books on radiation transfer, for instance 1. S. Chandrasekhar, Radiative Transfer, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1950, (RT), 2. V. V. Sobolev, Light Scattering in Planetary Atmospheres, New York, Pergamon Press, 1975, (LSPA), 3. H. C. van de Hulst, Multiple Light Scattering. Tables, Formulas and - plications. Vol. 1,2, New York, Academic Press, 1980, (MLS), treat mainly the homogeneous atmospheres. However, as known, the actual atmospheres of stars and planets, basins of water, and other artificial and nat ural media are not homogeneous. This book deals with the model of vertically inhomogeneous atmosphere, which is closer to reality than the homogeneous models. This book is close to the aforementioned monographs in its scope of prob lems and style. Therefore, I guess that a preliminary knowledge of the con tents of these books, particularly of the book by Sobolev, would facilitate the readers' task substantially. On the other hand, all concepts, problems, and equations used in this book are considered in full in Chap. 1. So, it will be possible for those readers who do not possess the above knowledge to understand this book. A general idea about the content of the book can be gained from both the Introduction and the Table of Contents.
