The Light Fantastic: A Modern Introduction to Classical and Quantum Optics

This book presents a thorough and self-contained introduction to modern optics, covering in full the three components--ray optics, wave optics, and quantum optics. The text covers all that would be needed over a comprehensive course in optics at the advanced undergraduate or beginning graduate level. Digital cameras, LCD screens, aircraft laser gyroscopes, and the optical fibre-based internet illustrate the penetration of optics in twenty-first century life: these and many more modern applications are presented from first principles.

The self-contained material allows the selection of specific themes grouped in the following way: Paraxial ray optics with matrix methods and aberrations - Interference, coherence and interferometers - Diffraction, spectrometers and Gaussian beams - Fourier optics, holography and information processing - Maxwell's theory; scattering, absorption and dispersion in bulk materials; interface behaviour -
Quantum phenomena, wave-particle duality, uncertainty principle; Schroedinger analysis of spectra, photon properties - Laser principles, He:Ne to MQW lasers, applications - Detectors: photodiodes, photomultipliers, image intensifiers; response, noise and linearlty; CCDs -
Fibre optics, from monomode fibre analysis to dense wavelength division multiplexing; fibre sensors - Photon-atom interactions, optical pumping, cooling and clocks - Second quantization, photon correlations, SPDC, entanglement, tests of quantum mechanics.

這本書提供了一個全面且自成一體的現代光學介紹，完整涵蓋了光線光學、波動光學和量子光學這三個組成部分。該書涵蓋了在高年級本科生或初級研究生水平上所需的光學課程的全部內容。數碼相機、液晶顯示屏、飛機激光陀螺儀和基於光纖的互聯網展示了光學在二十一世紀生活中的應用：這些以及更多現代應用從基本原理開始介紹。

這本書的內容自成一體，可以選擇特定主題進行分組，包括以下內容：近軸光學與矩陣方法和像差 - 干涉、相干性和干涉儀 - 繞射、光譜儀和高斯光束 - 傅立葉光學、全息術和信息處理 - 麥克斯韋理論；散射、吸收和材料中的色散；界面行為 - 量子現象、波粒二象性、不確定性原理；施羅丁格分析光譜、光子性質 - 激光原理、氦氖到多量子井激光器、應用 - 探測器：光電二極管、光倍增管、圖像增強器；響應、噪聲和線性度；CCD - 光纖光學，從單模光纖分析到密集波長分割多工；光纖傳感器 - 光子-原子相互作用、光泵浦、冷卻和時鐘 - 第二量子化、光子相關性、自發參量下轉換、納入性、量子力學測試。