Emil Wolf

Principles of Optics is one of the most highly cited and most influential physics books ever published, and one of the classic science books of the twentieth century. To celebrate the 60th anniversary of this remarkable book's first publication, the seventh expanded edition has been reprinted with a special foreword by Sir Peter Knight. The seventh edition was the first thorough revision and expansion of this definitive text. Amongst the material introduced in the seventh edition is a section on CAT scans, a chapter on scattering from inhomogeneous media, including an account of the principles of diffraction tomography, an account of scattering from periodic potentials, and a section on the so-called Rayleigh–Sommerfield diffraction theory. This expansive and timeless book continues to be invaluable to advanced undergraduates, graduate students and researchers working in all areas of optics.

Before the development of lasers, all available light sources, whether used in laboratories or found in nature, generated light which underwent uncontrollable fluctuations inherent in the emission process. Such fluctuations are detrimental to many applications. This effect is almost completely suppressed in laser radiation, making it possible to use lasers for a variety of applications. The underlying theory of fluctuating optical fields is known as coherence theory. Another manifestation of the fluctuations is the so-called phenomenon of polarization. This book is the first to provide a unified treatment of these two aspects of statistical optics, made possible by very recent discoveries, largely due to the author of this book. This will be of great interest to graduate students and researchers in physics and engineering in optical communications, the propagation of laser beams through fibers and through the turbulent atmosphere, and optical image formation. Each chapter contains problems to aid self-study.

This book presents a systematic account of optical coherence theory within the framework of classical optics, as applied to such topics as radiation from sources of different states of coherence, foundations of radiometry, effects of source coherence on the spectra of radiated fields, coherence theory of laser modes, and scattering of partially coherent light by random media. The book starts with a full mathematical introduction to the subject area and each chapter concludes with a set of exercises. The authors are renowned scientists and have made substantial contributions to many of the topics treated in the book. Much of the book is based on courses given by them at universities, scientific meetings and laboratories throughout the world. This book will undoubtedly become an indispensable aid to scientists and engineers concerned with modern optics, as well as to teachers and graduate students of physics and engineering.