Photonics: A Short Course (Undergraduate Lecture Notes in Physics)

This extended and revised edition will serve as a concise, self-contained, up-to-date introduction to Photonics for undergraduate students. It can also be used as a primer by researchers and professionals who start working in the field. Blending theory with technical descriptions, the book covers a wide range of topics, including the general mechanism of laser action, continuous and pulsed laser operation, optical propagation in isotropic and anisotropic media, operating principles and structure of passive optical components, electro-optic and acousto-optic modulation, solid-state lasers, semiconductor lasers and LEDs, nonlinear optical phenomena, and optical fiber components and devices. The book concludes with an overview of applications, including optical communications, telemetry and sensing, industrial and biomedical applications, solid-state lighting, displays, and photovoltaics. This second edition includes a set of problems at the end of all but the last chapter. These problems deal with numerical computations designed to illustrate the magnitudes of important quantities and are also intended to test the student’s ability to apply theoretical formulas.