Optics Experiments

This book provides the first critical edition of Ibn al-Haytham’s On the Shape of the Eclipse with English translation and commentary, which records the first scientific analysis of the camera obscura. On the Shape of the Eclipse includes pioneering research on the conditions of formation of the image, in a time deemed to be committed to aniconism. It also provides an early attempt to merge the two branches of Ancient optics—the theory of light and theory of vision.

Rapid development of microfabrication and assembly of nanostructures has opened up many opportunities to miniaturize structures that confine light, producing unusual and extremely interesting optical properties.

This book introduces readers to the development of a new generation of high pulse-repetition frequency instruments for multi-dimensional attosecond-resolution photoelectron spectroscopy (attosecond PES). It investigates the power scaling of femtosecond enhancement cavities for efficient intracavity high-harmonics generation (HHG). Further, it derives and verifies advanced resonator designs that feature large illuminated spots on all mirrors, which mitigate both intensity- and thermally-induced enhancement limitations.

The quantum statistical properties of radiation represent an important branch of modern physics with rapidly increasing applications in spectroscopy, quantum generators of radiation, optical communication, etc. They have also an increasing role in fields other than pure physics, such as biophysics, psychophysics, biology, etc. Interesting applications have been developed in high energy elementary particle collisions. The present monograph represents an extension and continuation of the previous monograph by this author entitled Coherence of Light (Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, London 1972, translated into Russian in the Publishing House Mir, Moscow 1974, second edition published by D. Reidel, Dordrecht-Boston 1985) and ofa review chapter in Progress in Optics, Vol. 18 (edited by E. Wolf, North-Holland Publishing Company, Amsterdam 1980) as well.