Two books covering the field of modern optics have been prepared in
this series “Methods of Experimental Physics”, separating the material into
two parts, one with the title “Geometrical and Instrumental Optics”, and
the other with the title “Physical Optics and Light Measurements”.
The purpose of these books is to help the scientist or engineer who is
not a specialist in optics to understand the main principles involved in
optical instrumentation and experimental optics.
Our main intent is to provide the reader with some of the interdisciplinary
understanding that is so essential in modern instrument design, development,
and manufacture. Coherent optical processing and holography are
also considered, since they play a very important role in contemporary
optical instrumentation. Radiometry, detectors, and charge coupled imaging
devices are also described in these volumes, because of their great
practical importance in modern optics. Basic and theoretical optics, like
laser physics, non linear optics and spectroscopy are not described,
however, because they are not normally considered relevant to optical
instrumentation.