Optics of Nanostructured Materials (Wiley Series in Lasers and Applications) [Hardcover]

Vadim A. Markel (Editor), Thomas F. George (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0471349682 | ISBN-13: 978-0471349686 | Publication Date: November 9, 2000 | Edition: 1

Some of the most exciting developments in the optics and processing of nanostructured materials can be found in applied science and engineering. The topics covered in this book are at the cutting edge of research.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...written by leading scientists in their own field." (Measurement Science & Technology, September 2001)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 568 pages
• Publisher: Wiley-Interscience; 1 edition (November 9, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471349682
• ISBN-13: 978-0471349686
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,972,059 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Recommendation of Optics of Nanostructured Materials, April 11, 2001

By 

Paul Scott Carney (Saint Louis, MO USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Optics of Nanostructured Materials (Wiley Series in Lasers and Applications) (Hardcover)

I highly recommend "Optics of Nanostructured Materials" to scientists and aspiring scientists who work in optics or whose work is even tangentially related to optics. Though the book is an edited collection of chapters there is a certain consistency of in the level of presentation. That level of presentation is better described in the plural: levels of presentation. The chapters tend to have extensive discussions of the physics and of the new intuition required to understand the sometimes quirky world of nanoscale physics: that regime where our classical and quantum views of the world meet. The intuitive picture is always accompanied by a thorough mathematical development of the subject matter. The mathematical presentation may be somewhat beyond the level of some undergraduates, though an undergradute with a grasp of PDE's and some exposure to quantum mechanics should have little trouble. There is very little taken for granted in the reader's background, though each chapter does move very rapidly from basic principles into the main discussion. For instance, the first chapter which deals with photonic crystals starts with Maxwell's equations but then progresses to a discussion of band structure in about two pages.

The text is prossibly of greatest value to graduate students and researchers. The subjects are, of course, bound together by the common thread of nanoscale optics. Beyond that common thread, the topics seem somewhat ecclectic. There are chapters on main stream subjects such as photonic crystals and quatum dots, but there are also delightful forays into subjects such as fractals, chaos, nonlinear spectroscopy, and the optics of smoke. For the active researcher, these chapters are a guide into new areas with multidisciplinary applications and where a wealth of open problems await discovery. These chapters differentiate this book from the all too common edited collections that seem to appear every few weeks whose contents may have great archival value but are completely uninspiring. A read through this book will leave any scientist with a pulse ready to run to his or her lab and get back to work, possibly on one of the topics discussed here.