This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1964.

"Mathematical Theory of Dispersion-Managed Optical Solitons" discusses recent advances covering optical solitons, soliton perturbation, optical cross-talk, Gabitov-Turitsyn Equations, quasi-linear pulses, and higher order Gabitov-Turitsyn Equations. Focusing on a mathematical perspective, the book bridges the gap between concepts in engineering and mathematics, and gives an outlook to many new topics for further research. The book is intended for researchers and graduate students in applied mathematics, physics and engineering and also it will be of interest to those who are conducting research in nonlinear fiber optics. Dr. Anjan Biswas is an Associate Professor at the Department of Applied Mathematics & Theoretical Physics, Delaware State University, Dover, DE, USA; Dr. Daniela Milovic is an Associate Professor at the Department of Telecommunications, Faculty of Electronic Engineering, University of Nis, Serbia; Dr. Matthew Edwards is the Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Alabama A & M University in Huntsville, AL, USA.

Going beyond standard introductory texts, Mathematical Optics: Classical, Quantum, and Computational Methods brings together many new mathematical techniques from optical science and engineering research. Profusely illustrated, the book makes the material accessible to students and newcomers to the field. Divided into six parts, the text presents state-of-the-art mathematical methods and applications in classical optics, quantum optics, and image processing. Part I describes the use of phase space concepts to characterize optical beams and the application of dynamic programming in optical waveguides. Part II explores solutions to paraxial, linear, and nonlinear wave equations. Part III discusses cutting-edge areas in transformation optics (such as invisibility cloaks) and computational plasmonics. Part IV uses Lorentz groups, dihedral group symmetry, Lie algebras, and Liouville space to analyze problems in polarization, ray optics, visual optics, and quantum optics. Part V examines the role of coherence functions in modern laser physics and explains how to apply quantum memory channel models in quantum computers. Part VI introduces super-resolution imaging and differential geometric methods in image processing. As numerical/symbolic computation is an important tool for solving numerous real-life problems in optical science, many chapters include Mathematica® code in their appendices. The software codes and notebooks as well as color versions of the book’s figures are available at www.crcpress.com.

A. Sommerfeld's "Mathematische Theorie der Diffraction" marks a milestone in optical theory, full of insights that are still relevant today. In a stunning tour de force, Sommerfeld derives the first mathematically rigorous solution of an optical diffraction problem. Indeed, his diffraction analysis is a surprisingly rich and complex mix of pure and applied mathematics, and his often-cited diffraction solution is presented only as an application of a much more general set of mathematical results. This complete translation, reflecting substantial scholarship, is the first publication in English of Sommerfeld's original work. The extensive notes by the translators are rich in historical background and provide many technical details for the reader.

The first textbook on mathematical methods focusing on techniques for optical science and engineering, this text is ideal for upper division undergraduate and graduate students in optical physics. Containing detailed sections on the basic theory, the textbook places strong emphasis on connecting the abstract mathematical concepts to the optical systems to which they are applied. It covers many topics which usually only appear in more specialized books, such as Zernike polynomials, wavelet and fractional Fourier transforms, vector spherical harmonics, the z-transform, and the angular spectrum representation. Most chapters end by showing how the techniques covered can be used to solve an optical problem. Essay problems based on research publications and numerous exercises help to further strengthen the connection between the theory and its applications.

Starting from first principles, this reference treats the theoretical aspects of quantum optics. It develops a unified approach for determining the dynamics of a two-level and three-level atom in combinations of quantized field under certain conditions.

Symplectic geometry, well known as the basic structure of Hamiltonian mechanics, is also the foundation of optics. In fact, optical systems (geometric or wave) have an even richer symmetry structure than mechanical ones (classical or quantum). The symmetries underlying the geometric model of light are based on the symplectic group. Geometric Optics on Phase Space develops both geometric optics and group theory from first principles in their Hamiltonian formulation on phase space. This treatise provides the mathematical background and also collects a host of useful methods of practical importance, particularly the fractional Fourier transform currently used for image processing. The reader will appreciate the beautiful similarities between Hamilton's mechanics and this approach to optics. The appendices link the geometry thus introduced to wave optics through Lie methods. The book addresses researchers and graduate students.

In 1690, Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695) published Traité de la Lumière, containing his renowned wave theory of light. It is considered a landmark in seventeenth-century science, for the way Huygens mathematized the corpuscular nature of light and his probabilistic conception of natural knowledge. This book discusses the development of Huygens' wave theory, reconstructing the winding road that eventually led to Traité de la Lumière. For the first time, the full range of manuscript sources is taken into account. In addition, the development of Huygens' thinking on the nature of light is put in the context of his optics as a whole, which was dominated by his lifelong pursuit of theoretical and practical dioptrics. In so doing, this book offers the first account of the development of Huygens' mathematical analysis of lenses and telescopes and its significance for the origin of the wave theory of light. As Huygens applied his mathematical proficiency to practical issues pertaining to telescopes – including trying to design a perfect telescope by means of mathematical theory – his dioptrics is significant for our understanding of seventeenth-century relations between theory and practice. With this full account of Huygens' optics, this book sheds new light on the history of seventeenth-century optics and the rise of the new mathematical sciences, as well as Huygens' oeuvre as a whole. Students of the history of optics, of early mathematical physics, and the Scientific Revolution, will find this book enlightening.