Optics: Volume 2 of Modern Classical Physics

Summary

A groundbreaking textbook on twenty-first-century waves of all sorts and their applications

Kip Thorne and Roger Blandford's monumental Modern Classical Physics is now available in five stand-alone volumes that make ideal textbooks for individual graduate or advanced undergraduate courses on statistical physics; optics; elasticity and fluid dynamics; plasma physics; and relativity and cosmology. Each volume teaches the fundamental concepts, emphasizes modern, real-world applications, and gives students a physical and intuitive understanding of the subject.

Optics is an essential introduction to a resurgent subject. Optics originally referred to the study of light, but today the field encompasses all types of waves, including electromagnetic waves, from gamma rays to radio waves; gravitational waves; waves in solids, fluids, and plasmas; and quantum waves. The past few decades have seen revolutions in optics-amazing advances in nonlinear optics technology, a growing understanding of optical phenomena throughout the natural world, and an increasing appreciation of the wide-ranging applicability of optics' central principles. Optics shows how and why this subject-which was once a standard part of physics curricula-should again be routinely taught to physics students, as well as to students in engineering, computer science, and the natural sciences.