Waves and Fields in Optoelectronics (Prentice-Hall series in solid state physical electronics) [Hardcover]

Hermann A. Haus (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 464 pages
• Publisher: Prentice Hall (September 1983)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0139460535
• ISBN-13: 978-0139460531
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,468,354 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fine book that should be brought back, May 4, 2004

By 

Jonathan Birge (Cambridge, MA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Waves and Fields in Optoelectronics (Prentice-Hall series in solid state physical electronics) (Hardcover)

I can sympathize somewhat with frustrated reviews of this book. Haus' style is to try to pull the reader up to his level of intuition and understanding. Unfortunately, Haus didn't always seem to have the greatest empathy for those who don't share his experience, let alone his intelligence, and so the book can be frustrating at times. Having said that, the book largely succeeds in the ambitious mission Haus had for it, namely to instill in readers a coherent conceptual framework for thinking about problems in wave mechanics at a level that will allow them to actually contribute to the field. With so many textbooks simply regurgitating the literature and hemming closely to the standard pedogogy, Haus' book is notable for his unique approach to the field. He focuses as much on understanding a problem as in solving it, and to this end he chooses formalisms which may not be the most compact and simple, but which offer greater insight and intuition. This, I think, is his motivation behind stressing the concepts of wave impedence matching and perturbation theory, two very unifying formalisms in optics (and engineering in general). While this requires more effort of the reader, I am certain that it is well worth it and that Haus is not simply trying to make one's life gratuitiously difficult. His own success as one of the great theorists in the field should give anyone sufficient faith in taking the effort of following his lead. It's thus a shame that his textbook has fallen out of use (except for graduate students at MIT and Harvard, who don't seem to be much worse for the experience) and it seems to me that it is not for lack of quality, but simply because other books provide paths of lesser resistance.

6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Food of the gods, April 11, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Waves and Fields in Optoelectronics (Prentice-Hall series in solid state physical electronics) (Hardcover)

If you want to be a zen master of optoelectronics then this is the book to read (or at least start with). This book is not for the mathematically challenged or timid, but derivations of the equations cited should take only a few minutes. The presentation is cogent, the book is short (unlike born and wolf), and the derivations are elegant and useful. The reader should already be familiar with Maxwell's equations in vector form, complex form, and tensor form (i.e. using the Einstein notation). Hermann Haus is an optics god, referred to by some as the smartest man alive. Perhaps by reading this you too may get a little food of the gods and find yourself elevated to a higher plane. If you read this book and find that you have difficulty understanding it then you need to read a more elementary book (perhaps Hecht, or maybe Haliday and Resnick has something your speed).

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Haus is an optics master, August 3, 2004

By 

A Reader (Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Waves and Fields in Optoelectronics (Prentice-Hall series in solid state physical electronics) (Hardcover)

Dr. Haus (RIP) has a great writing style. Every sentence that you read you have to think about what he is saying. Once you understand it, you will jump out of your chair. It is too bad that this book is out of print. I highly recommend that you get it book from a university's library if you can't purchase it.