Lasers (back to top)
| Principles
of Lasers, 4th ed., Orazio Svelto, translated by David
C. Hanna, (Plenun, 1998). |
Excellent introductory
text aimed at the advanced undergraduate student and beginning
graduate student. Contains many practical problems and
examples. The translation was not a problem. |
| Laser
Electronics, 2nd ed., Joseph T. Verdeyen, (Prentice-Hall,
1989). |
Introductory text at
a similar, or somewhat lower, level as Svelto's text. By comparison,
it has few worked examples but the treatment of the light-matter
interaction is better. The style is amusing and more casual. |
| Lasers,
Peter Milonni and Joseph Eberly, (Wiley, 1988). |
Another excellent introductory
text. Very clear headed treatment. I use it myself as a reference. |
| Lasers,
Anthony E. Siegman, (University Science Books, 1986). |
Classic text on the
subject. |
| Quantum
Electronics, 3rd ed., Amnon Yariv, (Wiley, 1989). |
I've used this as a reference for years. |
Ultrashort Lasers (back to top)
| Ultrashort
laser pulse phenomena, Jean-Claude Diels and Wolfgang
Rudolph, (Academic Press, 1996). |
The first textbook treatment of this subject. The next edition was little changed. |
| Lasers
for ultrashort light pulses, Joachim Herrmann and
Bernd Wilhelmi, (North-Holland, 1987). |
One of the first books on the subject.
Still useful. |
| Frequency-resolved
optical gating - The measurement of ultrashort optical pulses,
Rick Trebino (Kluwer, 2002). |
A text by the inventor of FROG with plenty of background on ultrashort pulses. |
| Femtosecond
technology - from basic research to application prospects,
T. Kamiya, et. al (Eds.), Springer Series in Photonics, (Springer-Verlag,
1999). |
From a communications prospective. |
Basic Optics (back to top)
| Modern Optics,
Robert Guenther, (Wiley, 1990). |
A great little textbook. Advanced undergrad. |
| Principles of optics,
Max Born and Emil Wolf, with contributions by A.B. Bhatia, et al., (Cambridge University Press, 1999). |
A classic. Presents a broad and formal treatment. |
| Optics,
Eugene Hecht, with contributions by Alfred Zajac, (Addison-Wesley, 1987). |
Good text. Less formal than Principles of optics. |
| Fundamentals of optics,
F. A. Jenkins and H. E. White, (McGraw-Hill, 1976). |
Also a good, but less formal text. |
| Physical Optics,
C.A. Bennett, (Wiley, 2007). |
Mid-level undergraduate text. Not great as a reference but
very accessible. |
Nonlinear Optics (back to top)
| Nonlinear
Optics, Robert W. Boyd, (Academic Press, 1992). |
Great treatment. This edition uses cgs units. Later editions switch to SI.
This is one of the texts I reach for first when I need a reference. |
| Quantum
Electronics, 3rd ed., Amnon Yariv, (Wiley, 1989). |
Less thorough coverage than Boyd but, perhaps, easier to jump into. |
| Optical
Electronics, 4th ed., Amnon Yariv, (Saunders College
Press, 1991). |
Undergraduate version of Quantum
Electronics. |
| The Principles
Of Nonlinear Optics, Y. R. Shen, (Wiley, 1984). |
One of the first books on the subject.
Terse treatment, but useful for a broad overview. |
| Nonlinear
fiber optics, 3rd ed., Govind P. Agrawal, (Academic
Press, 1991). |
Great treatment of third order effects
as they apply to propagation in fibers, but also a great resource
in general. The importance of fiber optics is difficult to overstate. |
| The Supercontinuum
Laser Source, R. R. Alfano, Ed., (Springer-Verlag,
1989). |
Detailed analysis of third order
effects and the propagation of intense short pulses. A wide variety
of media are considered. |
Quantum Optics (back to top)
| The Quantum Theory of Light, 3rd ed.,
Rodney Loudon, (Oxford University Press, 2000). |
Widely recognized as a classic text. |
| Quantum Optics, An Introduction,
Mark Fox, (Oxford University Press, 2007). |
Intended to be a "Loudon" at the advanced undergraduate level. |
| Quantum
Optics, Marlan O. Scully and M. Suhail Zubairy, (Cambridge University Press, 1997). |
Good treatment. I use both this and the one below as references. |
| Elements Of Quantum Optics,
2nd ed., Pierre Meystre and Murray Sargent III, (Springer-Verlag, 1991). |
See above! |
| Optical Coherence and Quantum Optics,
Leonard Mandel and Emil Wolf, (Cambridge, 1995 - but corrected in 2008). |
Although the authors were very prominent (Mandel died in 2001), I don't see this
text mentioned much. It's a great reference because its coverage is broad and it frequently shows steps
that other texts skip. |
Other useful references
(back to top)
| Fourier
transform and its applications, 2nd ed., Ronald Bracewell,
(McGraw-Hill, 1986). |
Best treatment of the subject I
have seen for people that have work to do. |
| Numerical
recipes in C, 2nd ed., William Press, Saul Teukolsky,
William Vettering and Brian Flannery, (Cambridge University Press,
1995). |
Or in Fortran, Fortran 90, ...
Considered low brow by the cognoscenti, but I have had good luck
with them. |