Customer Reviews

Introduction to Optics (3rd Edition)

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I have given recitations for a course when I was a TA. For my own reference it was very good concerning many matters, when one really needs the problems like reducing aberrations or like multilayer thin film optics or may be even non linear optics, this book is a very honest written book. But I do not know if it is a good idea to talk about aberrations for the people who do not have much idea about Gausssian geometrical optics for instance. Its level is not a graduate level, but, you know, for young people, they do not want to hear about the problems that they may face in life, untill they really do. I still have this book on my shelf, even after shifting to different topics. To me it is a compact and a real life book. Does not talk about myths, tells you the truth of life in optics. But of course Hecht s book is better may be as an introduction, gives a better overall map of the field. If you will have several optics book in your life this is one of them. But only if you work out the problems and think about the reason why they were asked. Every problem in this book is about a real life case in the optoelectronics laboratory and not about a fantasy.

The authors present optics at an intermediate level - not as detailed or complete as Born and Wolf, but it is a mathematical treatment and just slightly on a lower level than Klein and Furtak or Hecht. It is not just a survey. Certain parts of it are extremely good - for example, the chapter on Theory of Multilayer Films presents more useful data on antireflection coatings in a more concise, readable, well-illustrated format than any of the above books. It also presents common applications such as the Snellen eye chart used to measure visual acuity at your opthamologist in an "Optics of the Eye" chapter. Overall, a pretty decent first level optics book.

I used this book for an undergraduate optics class and felt that it was very clear and readable. It is good for a survey optics course, but it lacks some more technical information useful in the laboratory. For classwork and theory, it laid a good foundation. For lab work, I often found myself having to look to other books such as Hecht or Jenkins & White. It has since served as a good reference book for many basic concepts. The concepts and mathematical procedures can be found easily and quickly without wading through the technical parts.

I used this text book in an Optics course, and my classmates and I found that the book was hard to follow. I would not recommend this book to anyone, unless you are already well educated in optics and light, and just need a refresher. I found many things are explained poorly, and in long unclear rants. Most of us in my class started using are book from general physics 2 (Serway physics for scientist and engineers) which and several chapters on optics at the end, and found it to contain a significant fraction of the information in the first 15 chapters of this book, but explained much more clearly and precisely. In summary the book does contain a lot of good information if you can follow how it is presented.

I'd have to admit as an actual optics major, this book served my purposes very well. There really is no way way you can go through introductory optics in 1 semester, which is how all the physics departments do it - it doesn't do the subject justice.

My favorite chapters from the book are as follows:

-Theory Multilayer Thin Film

-Matrix Treatment of Polarization

-Production of Polarized Light

-The 3 chapters dedicated to diffraction

-Fresnel Equations

These are all chapters that don't require Maxwell's Equations at all, even if you knew them. The optical properties of material chapters deals with Maxwell's Equations more or less for the entire chapter.

The laser and subsequent chapters also give you a VERY BASIC flavor of expect in more specialized books.

If I had to recommend a book for actually learning the material and that has worked out problems, this would be the one. Born and Wolf is great, but only as a reference, and still there are flaws in that book as well. Jenkins and White or Schaum's Outline for Optics might be useful supplements, as I used them from time to time. Hecht is not a good book to learn out of, but a good way to learn what optics is all about.

We used this book for a one-semester undergraduate optics course. Readers should be aware of the fact that this textbook focuses more on the applications, not so much with theory. You only need the first-year introductory physics to keep up with the most stuff in the book, and the problem sets are very manageable with the answers to most problems provided at the end of the book. As a physics student, this made the entire course awfully boring and meaningless. I think many colleges teach optics after undergrad E&M, and if you are in one of those colleges, I strongly recommend NOT using this book as the textbook. Ideally, you would want take Maxwell equations as a starting point and going into diffraction theory, boundary value problems, etc., especially if you have already finished sophomore/junior level E&M. This book treats these only toward the end of the book. Who wants to bother with a bunch of geometrical optics, only to solve different kinds of problems without being exposed to new principles? I think an optics course in physics should be taught in a fashion that the phenomena in relation to Maxwell equations are illuminated. On a good side, I do think the book does a pretty good job of teaching the materials that it covers.

I used this book in an optics course, and I'd say that it was an okay book, not really something special.

Pros:

-Many nice illustrations

-It describes many aspects of modern optics

Cons:

-At times really confusing, e.g. one equation contains two different variables, t, which describes both the transmission coefficient and the time. They could at least have added a subscript

-The book is rather wordy, which means one looses one concentration rather fast.

I took a course in Optics from the author and he used his own book. It was awful. I had to acquire several other optics books to actually learn the material. If you're looking for a good optics book, look elsewhere. Hecht and Zach or Klien is a much better option.

The contents of the book are perfect but the quality of the papers is awful and it affected the quality of printing.

I had this book for a class, I thought I was going to learn about Optics.. Turns out this Black and white book is very dull, and the course is a mathematical derivation class. The book lacks helpful examples to facilitate the reader to understand the material and how it applies in the real world.