Customer Reviews

Femtosecond Laser Pulses: Principles and Experiments (Advanced Texts in Physics)

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

 

 

I use femtosecond lasers in my graduate work, and I found this book an excellent source of review material in preparing for my oral examinations. It is not very detailed or mathematical, but has excellent phenomenonological discussions of a variety of laser properties and techniques. It is also handy because it is fairly recent. I found particularly useful the sections on amplification, semiconductor lasers, and ultrashort diagnostics.

This book is not a comprehensive guide to building and using an ultrashort pulse laser system because it lacks so much detail. However, the equations are explained very well, and the references seem fairly comprehensive.

The book is also completely missing a discussion of fiber laser and ultrashort pulse propogation in fibers. The section on nonlinear ultrashort optics is also far too brief.

The second edition of this book is revised and enriched with new and hot materials. The concepts of "coherent control" and "attosecond pulses" are added as they become more and more significant.

The first 3 chapters of the books do not seem very useful. Although the authors tried their best, especially the discussion of "mode-locking" is not as clearly stated as Demtroder's "Laser Spectroscopy". More vivid, illustrative and tangible examples would be very useful.

The rest of the book can be considered good and in my opinion this books does not deserve more than 4 stars.