THEORY OF COHERENCE

The 236-page volume Introduction to the Theory of Coherence and Polarization of Light provides a unified treatment of the phenomena of coherence and polarization, which are two aspects of statistical optics. The text is targeted toward graduate students and researchers in physics and engineering who are involved with optical communications, optical image formation, medical diagnostics, and the propagation of laser beams through fibers and the turbulent atmosphere. Chapters cover second-order coherence phenomena in the space-time and space-frequency domains, radiation from sources of different states of coherence, coherence effects in scattering, and the elementary theory of polarization of stochastic electromagnetic beams. Each chapter contains problems to aid in self-study. Emil Wolf; Cambridge University Press, New York, 2007; $45.