Customer Reviews

Diode Lasers and Photonic Integrated Circuits

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is a masterpiece. The book is a great tutor whether you are a novice or an expert in the field. Great attention has been paid to detail (which is illustrated in the fact that you will find almost no typos in the book). Many different topics such as gain calculation, reflectors, waveguides, etc. have been comprehensively treated at both a qualitative and quantitative level. This leaves the reader with not just the methodology for computing parameters for lasers using equations, but also an intuitive understanding of the physical phenomena involved in making the calculations (via the qualitative analysis). The authors provide a unique perspective to many a phenomena that have been routinely treated by other texts. This is definitely one book for the archives!!!

Coldren and Corzine have done a very good job, explaining very clearly many issues concerning the physics of laser diodes and photonic integrated circuits. It is also helpful that various appendices go more into detail on certain subjects, allowing the main text to be more easily readable.

I was only a bit disappointed not to find more details on high-power laser diodes and on various semiconductor materials; the book focuses on InGaAs/GaAs-based low-power lasers. However, the covered topics are treated really well, and that is most important. The book is certainly very useful for my work, and can be recommended particularly to those who want to learn about the general physics of diode lasers, rather than on specific types of devices for various spectral regions.

For some derivations, I will suggest "Principles and applications of optical communications" by Max Ming-Kang Liu. It is more complete and easier to read for beginners.

This is an excellent text for semiconductor laser engineers. It will serve perfectly as either a reference or a course textbook. It covers a wide range of laser related topics in a very intuitive way. Coldren does a masterful job of conveying the core concepts without getting bogged down in needlessly complicated math (although all the math is there in the appendix if desired). There are only few complaints myself and others students from his class have discussed:
1. The end of chapter problems often require assumptions that are not at all clear or obvious from the text. Which is not a problem if you're taking the class from the man himself, but I'd imagine could frustrate others
2. It could use in chapter example problems. Although he does an amazing job giving the readers an intuitive understanding without examples, I can't help but think it could be even better with a half-dozen example problems per chapter (and it could solve issue #1).
3. Despite the thorough treatment, he could do a little bit better job of assuming a little less knowledge from his reader. Some of the advanced concepts still seem to fall from the sky, lacking proper motivation and setup. A good chunk of the useful information is buried within paragraphs. He could do a better jump of calling more attention to critical concepts rather than glancing over them as he so often does in Ch.2. I can tell you the class he wrote this for contains many non-telecom, non-EE students, and that should be taken into account better. More detail on the materials side of things could make this book more useful to nitrides engineers as well

Luckily problem #2 is being taken care of in the second edition, and #3 to a lesser extent. Overall This book is wonderful, and probably the most read and marked up book in my library.

This books have excellent science information. Especially, it's good for semiconductor laser part.