Böcker i Springer Optical Sciences-serien

This book provides a comprehensive overview of laser sources and their applications in various fields of science, industry, and technology. After an introduction to the basics of laser physics, different laser types and materials for lasers are summarized in the context of a historical survey, outlining the evolution of the laser over the past five decades. This includes, amongst other aspects, gas lasers, excimer lasers, the wide range of solid-state and semiconductor lasers, and femtosecond and other pulsed lasers where particular attention is paid to high-power sources. Subsequent chapters address related topics such as laser modulation and nonlinear frequency conversion. In closing, the enormous importance of the laser is demonstrated by highlighting its current applications in everyday life and its potential for future developments. Typical applications in advanced material processing, medicine and biophotonics as well as plasma and X-ray generation for nanoscale lithography are discussed. The book provides broad and topical coverage of laser photonics and opto-electronics, focusing on significant findings and recent advances rather than in-depth theoretical studies. Thus, it is intended not only for university students and engineers, but also for scientists and professionals applying lasers in biomedicine, material processing and everyday consumer products. Further, it represents essential reading for engineers using or developing high-power lasers for scientific or industrial applications.

This book addresses the most advanced to-date mathematical approach and numerical methods in electromagnetic field theory and wave propagation. It presents the application of developed methods and techniques to the analysis of waves in various guiding structures -shielded and open metal-dielectric waveguides of arbitrary cross-section, planar and circular waveguides filled with inhomogeneous dielectrics, metamaterials, chiral media, anisotropic media and layered media with absorption. It also looks into spectral properties of wave propagation for the waveguide families being considered, and the relevant mathematical techniques such as spectral theory of non-self-adjoint operator-valued functions are described, including rigorous proofs of the existence of various types of waves. Further, numerical methods constructed on the basis of the presented mathematical approach and the results of numerical modeling for various structures are also described in depth.The book is beneficial to a broad spectrum of readers ranging from pure and applied mathematicians in electromagnetic field theory to researchers and engineers who are familiar with mathematics. Further, it is also useful as a supplementary text for upper-level undergraduate students interested in learning more advanced topics of mathematical methods in electromagnetics.

This book includes the description, modeling and realization of new optical metrology techniques for technical diagnostics of materials. Special attention is paid to multi-step phase shifting interferometry with arbitrary phase shifts between interferograms, phase shifting and correlation digital speckle pattern interferometry, optical-digital speckle correlation, and digital image correlation, as well as dynamic speckle patterns analysis.Optoacoustic techniques can be treated as a separate branch of optical metrology and can solve many problems of technical diagnostics, including detection and localization of subsurface defects in laminated composite materials. The utility of such techniques can be increased by illumination of the object via acoustic waves at certain frequencies. Hence, an effective theoretical approach to the modeling of an elastic wave field interaction with an interphase defect, and to defect visualization using dynamic speckle patterns, is also includedin this book. The experimental proof of the proposed approaches was achieved using a specially created hybrid optical-digital system for detection of different subsurface defects.This book is intended for engineers, researchers and students engaged in the field of nondestructive evaluation of materials and technical diagnostics of structural elements, hybrid optical systems, speckle metrology and optoacoustic imaging techniques.

Classical asymptotic expansions, while producing a good approximation for the diffracted fields in general, appear hardly applicable in the case of extremely elongated bodies. Thus, there are problems that are on the one hand too difficult for numerical solvers due to large system size, and on the other hand make the description with classical asymptotic methods hard. The book explains why this happens and suggests the way out. By defining the characteristics of a strongly elongated body it introduces a special class of asymptotic approximations, which are in some sense uniform with respect to the rate of body elongation.Chapter 1 briefly describes the results of V. A. Fock and further developments of his approach towards the problems of diffraction by elongated obstacles. It formulates the cases of moderately and strongly elongated bodies. The rest of the book describes the approach of special parabolic equations, which lead to new asymptotic approximations for the diffracted fields. Chapters 2, 3 and 4 discuss diffraction by bodies of elliptical shape: The elliptic cylinder with a strongly elongated cross section and prolate spheroid with a high aspect ratio. Chapter 5 generalizes the approach to some other shapes such as narrow cones and narrow hyperboloids. Mathematical formulas for the Whittaker functions widely used in the book are collected in the Appendix.The concise derivations are supplied with numerous test examples that compare asymptotic approximations with numerically computed fields and clarify the specifics of high frequency diffraction by strongly elongated bodies. The reference solutions presented in the book enable one to validate the newly developed numerical solvers.

X-ray experiments have been used widely in materials science, and conventional spectroscopy has been based on linear responses in light¿matter interactions. Recent development of ultrafast light sources of tabletop lasers and X-ray free electron lasers reveals nonlinear optical phenomena in the X-ray region, and the measurement signals have been found to carry a further wealth of information on materials. This book overviews such nonlinear X-ray spectroscopy and its related issues for materials science. Each chapter is written by pioneers in the field and skillfully reviews the topics of nonlinear spectroscopy including X-ray multi-photon absorption and X-ray second harmonic generation. The chapters are divided depending on photon wavelength, ranging from extreme ultraviolet to (soft) X-ray. To facilitate readers¿ comprehensive understanding, some of the chapters cover the conventional linear X-ray spectroscopy and basic principles of the non-linear responses. The book is mainly accessible as a primer for junior/senior- or graduate-level readers, and it also serves as a useful reference or guide even for established researchers in optical spectroscopy. The book offers readers opportunities to benefit from cutting-edge research in this new area of nonlinear X-ray spectroscopy.