Light Physics

This fourth volume of a four-volume textbook covers the oscillations of systems with one or more degrees of freedom; the concept of waves, focusing on light and sound; phase and group velocities, their physical meaning, and their measurement; diffraction and interference of light; polarization phenomena; and the formation of images in the eye and in optical instruments.

What is the nature of light? How does an artist’s selection and use of colorants determine how we experience a work of art? What can visual illusions tell us about the nature of perception? In what ways do the laws of optics manifest themselves in the visual arts?

This fourth volume of a four-volume textbook covers the oscillations of systems with one or more degrees of freedom; the concept of waves, focusing on light and sound; phase and group velocities, their physical meaning, and their measurement

This compact but exhaustive textbook, now in its significantly revised and expanded second edition, provides an essential introduction to the field quantization of light and matter with applications to atomic physics and strongly correlated systems.

The discoveries of modern physics are so astounding and counterintuitive that they almost defy belief. Yet ample evidence shows that such baffling theories as quantum mechanics and general relativity must be correct, if only because some of today’s key technologies wouldn’t work without them.

This undergraduate textbook aids readers in studying music and color, which involve nearly the entire gamut of the fundamental laws of classical as well as atomic physics. The objective bases for these two subjects are, respectively, sound and light. Their corresponding underlying physical principles overlap greatly: Both music and color are manifestations of wave phenomena. As a result, commonalities exist as to the production, transmission, and detection of sound and light.