- Email: [email protected]
Classical optics and its applications
228
Book reviews / Optics and Lasers in Engineering 40 (2003) 225–229
the gas lasers become a little bit overwhelming. For example, to find the well-known argon-ion lines, the reader has to plough through several levels of sub-division to Section 3.2.3.12, Group VIIIA lasers; Table 3.2.12, and then find the argon table! A book like this is crying out for CD ROM publication. However, even when you find the sections of interest, it is not easy to extract the information you want. If you are not a laser scientist per se but a user of lasers and you want to know the most common emission wavelengths of the argon-ion lasers then you won’t get it easily here. Looking up the 488 nm line of argon you find two possible transitions, one at 0.487986 mm and one at 0.488903 mm. Which is the correct value? No indication of oscillator strength is given. Only a look at the term diagram (about 40 pages earlier ( (no tie-up in units): only in the book!) helps here where the line is shown as 4880 A then do you realise that it is the 0.487986 mm line rounded up. Surely some indication or highlighting of the most common or strongest lines would aid the usefulness of this book. This is obviously a mammoth undertaking, but it has to be asked who it is aimed at. Most of the information contained here is probably more easily accessible from the ‘‘web’’. The title itself is misleading; the original title of Handbook of Laser Wavelengths is actually more appropriate. In short this is probably a book for the library rather than personal ownership. John Watson Department of Engineering, Kings College, University of Aberdeen, Fraser Noble Building, Aberdeen AB24 3UE, UK Email address: [email protected] PII: S 0 1 4 3 - 8 1 6 6 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 1 4 0 - 9
Classical optics and its applications Masud Mansuripur, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2002; ISBN 0-521800-935 pp. 512, d75.00 Good bookshops seem not to be short of general texts on optics. Is this just one more, competing for shelf space with others having similar titles and targeting much the same market? The title would lead one to suppose so. Spend a few minutes leafing through it, however, and you begin to realise that this is something rather different. Classical Optics and its Applications is not a conventional text. It comprises 37 separate essays, each between 10 and 20 pages long, and each standing largely independently of the rest. It is not, therefore, a book for working through, but for dipping into. Not so much a basic course in optics but an opportunity to deepen one’s understanding of topics that have been met before. Nevertheless, the contents are not quite as random as they might at first appear; there are definite themes that run through the book.
Book reviews / Optics and Lasers in Engineering 40 (2003) 225–229
229
Mansuripur is based at the Optical Sciences Center in Tucson, Arizona. Since 1997 he has contributed a regular column to Optics and Photonics News, a magazine produced by the Optical Society of America. His intention was to explain, to both students and practising engineers, some of the major classical concepts that, as he puts it, ‘‘shape our modern understanding of optics’’. These magazine articles were well received, and prompted Mansuripur to update and extend them, and to make them available in a more permanent form. That is the basis of this book. The individual articles, or chapters as they have become in this book, essentially explore diffraction, interference and polarisation—classical phenomena with which the reader is assumed to have some general familiarity. Just to take a random selection from the book’s contents, topics include Abbe’s sine condition, the van Cittert-Zernike theorem, the Faraday and Kerr effects, Fabry-Pe! rot etalons, Poynting’s vector, Michelson interferometry, Nomarski microscopy and many more. Although the optics may be ‘‘classical’’, there is no doubt concerning the relevance of the subject matter to modern-day technology. Several of the chapters explore peculiarities of well-known effects, or discuss them from an unusual perspective. Although mathematical formulations are of course included, the aim has been to keep these to the minimum necessary for understanding the underlying principles. The text is generously illustrated with line drawings, graphs and computer simulations, the latter using software developed by the author over the course of his 30 years of research. All are impressively clear and reproduced to the same consistently high standard. References for further reading are included with each chapter, and cover historical papers, books and review articles. Many of the chapters begin with a photograph and a brief biography of some of the principle investigators particularly associated with the subject under discussion. Many of the ‘‘greats’’ in optics are included, and it gives added depth to have the personalities described alongside the science that they explored. The book’s main strength is undoubtedly in the wide coverage of its subject matter and the lively way in which it is presented. I think it will appeal to anyone who is fascinated by optics, both those who teach it and those who apply it. It is not, though, a stand-alone text for those having little prior knowledge of the principles of optics, nor is it an easy read. But for those who already work as practitioners in the field of light, yet feel they still have much to learn, I thoroughly recommended it. R. Henderson Bioptica Limited, St. John’s Innovation Park, Cowley Road, CB4 0WS Cambridge, UK Email address: [email protected] PII: S 0 1 4 3 - 8 1 6 6 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 1 3 7 - 9
Book reviews / Optics and Lasers in Engineering 40 (2003) 225–229
the gas lasers become a little bit overwhelming. For example, to find the well-known argon-ion lines, the reader has to plough through several levels of sub-division to Section 3.2.3.12, Group VIIIA lasers; Table 3.2.12, and then find the argon table! A book like this is crying out for CD ROM publication. However, even when you find the sections of interest, it is not easy to extract the information you want. If you are not a laser scientist per se but a user of lasers and you want to know the most common emission wavelengths of the argon-ion lasers then you won’t get it easily here. Looking up the 488 nm line of argon you find two possible transitions, one at 0.487986 mm and one at 0.488903 mm. Which is the correct value? No indication of oscillator strength is given. Only a look at the term diagram (about 40 pages earlier ( (no tie-up in units): only in the book!) helps here where the line is shown as 4880 A then do you realise that it is the 0.487986 mm line rounded up. Surely some indication or highlighting of the most common or strongest lines would aid the usefulness of this book. This is obviously a mammoth undertaking, but it has to be asked who it is aimed at. Most of the information contained here is probably more easily accessible from the ‘‘web’’. The title itself is misleading; the original title of Handbook of Laser Wavelengths is actually more appropriate. In short this is probably a book for the library rather than personal ownership. John Watson Department of Engineering, Kings College, University of Aberdeen, Fraser Noble Building, Aberdeen AB24 3UE, UK Email address: [email protected] PII: S 0 1 4 3 - 8 1 6 6 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 1 4 0 - 9
Classical optics and its applications Masud Mansuripur, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2002; ISBN 0-521800-935 pp. 512, d75.00 Good bookshops seem not to be short of general texts on optics. Is this just one more, competing for shelf space with others having similar titles and targeting much the same market? The title would lead one to suppose so. Spend a few minutes leafing through it, however, and you begin to realise that this is something rather different. Classical Optics and its Applications is not a conventional text. It comprises 37 separate essays, each between 10 and 20 pages long, and each standing largely independently of the rest. It is not, therefore, a book for working through, but for dipping into. Not so much a basic course in optics but an opportunity to deepen one’s understanding of topics that have been met before. Nevertheless, the contents are not quite as random as they might at first appear; there are definite themes that run through the book.
Book reviews / Optics and Lasers in Engineering 40 (2003) 225–229
229
Mansuripur is based at the Optical Sciences Center in Tucson, Arizona. Since 1997 he has contributed a regular column to Optics and Photonics News, a magazine produced by the Optical Society of America. His intention was to explain, to both students and practising engineers, some of the major classical concepts that, as he puts it, ‘‘shape our modern understanding of optics’’. These magazine articles were well received, and prompted Mansuripur to update and extend them, and to make them available in a more permanent form. That is the basis of this book. The individual articles, or chapters as they have become in this book, essentially explore diffraction, interference and polarisation—classical phenomena with which the reader is assumed to have some general familiarity. Just to take a random selection from the book’s contents, topics include Abbe’s sine condition, the van Cittert-Zernike theorem, the Faraday and Kerr effects, Fabry-Pe! rot etalons, Poynting’s vector, Michelson interferometry, Nomarski microscopy and many more. Although the optics may be ‘‘classical’’, there is no doubt concerning the relevance of the subject matter to modern-day technology. Several of the chapters explore peculiarities of well-known effects, or discuss them from an unusual perspective. Although mathematical formulations are of course included, the aim has been to keep these to the minimum necessary for understanding the underlying principles. The text is generously illustrated with line drawings, graphs and computer simulations, the latter using software developed by the author over the course of his 30 years of research. All are impressively clear and reproduced to the same consistently high standard. References for further reading are included with each chapter, and cover historical papers, books and review articles. Many of the chapters begin with a photograph and a brief biography of some of the principle investigators particularly associated with the subject under discussion. Many of the ‘‘greats’’ in optics are included, and it gives added depth to have the personalities described alongside the science that they explored. The book’s main strength is undoubtedly in the wide coverage of its subject matter and the lively way in which it is presented. I think it will appeal to anyone who is fascinated by optics, both those who teach it and those who apply it. It is not, though, a stand-alone text for those having little prior knowledge of the principles of optics, nor is it an easy read. But for those who already work as practitioners in the field of light, yet feel they still have much to learn, I thoroughly recommended it. R. Henderson Bioptica Limited, St. John’s Innovation Park, Cowley Road, CB4 0WS Cambridge, UK Email address: [email protected] PII: S 0 1 4 3 - 8 1 6 6 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 1 3 7 - 9