This is the third edition of a successful and well-established text. Thoroughly revised and updated, the book provides a comprehensive introduction to the fundamentals of optics, and to a wide variety of more advanced areas of modern optical science. Several new sections have been added, including discussions of super-resolved imaging, phase-retrieval in optical and X-ray diffraction, phase-conjugate imaging and squeezed-light interferometry. Throughout, the subject matter is developed by a combination of unsophisticated mathematics and physical intuition, with particular emphasis being placed on Fourier analysis. The very broad range of subjects treated, together with the inclusion of many problems and over 300 diagrams and photographs, will make the book of great use to undergraduate and graduate students of physics, and to anyone working in the field of optical science.

‘ … a well established and essential text for both undergraduate and graduate physicists … father and son writing in concert have written a scholarly, authoritative and clearly written account of the principles and application of wave theory.’

Edward Atkins Source: Physics Education

‘This book has many stimulating ideas in it …’

Source: Contemporary Physics

‘It deserves to occupy a place on the shelf of any library or of any physics teacher.’

Source: Optica Acta