A Guided Tour of Light Beams: From lasers to optical knots

This book provides an introductory overview of a variety of novel light beams, covering their basic physics and optics, and discussing new cutting-edge applications to which they give rise in science, technology, and medicine. Following a short introduction, topics include optical propagation, Gaussian beams and lasers, orbital angular momentum and Laguerre-Gauss beams, Bessel and Airy beams, as well as other types of optical beams. Later chapters focus on entangled and pin-like beams and beam propagation through turbulence, before concluding with a discussion of the new frontiers in the field. It is an ideal guide for undergraduate students, beginning graduate students, or researchers who are not experts in this field.

Key Features

• Covers a broad range of exotic optical beams and their applications
• Many have never been covered in detail outside the original research literature
• Applications range from nanotechnology to medical diagnostics
• Written at an advanced undergraduate level but covering a number of cutting-edge research topics
• Of interest to a broad range of readers in areas such as physics, optics, engineering, and biomedical research

David S Simon is a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Stonehill College in Easton, MA, and a visiting researcher at Boston University. After earning a BS from The Ohio State University, he obtained PhDs in physics and electrical engineering from Johns Hopkins and Boston University. His research is primarily in the area of quantum optics.