Optics in Our Time

This book supports the celebration of the 2015 International Year of Light and Light-based Technologies as declared by the Executive Council of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The declaration acknowledges the role light and light-based technologies have played in transforming our lives via scientific contributions spanned over thousands of years. The year 2015 is chosen as the Year of Light as it "coincides with the anniversaries of a series of important milestones in the history of the science of light, including the works on optics by Ibn Al-Haytham in 1015, the notion of light as a wave proposed by Fresnel in 1815, the electromagnetic theory of light propagation proposed by Maxwell in 1865, Einstein's theory of photoelectric effect in 1905, and of the embedding of light in cosmology through general relativity in 1915, the discovery of the cosmic background by Penzias and Wilson and Kao's achievement concerning the transmission of light in fibres for optical communication both in 1965".§§This volume is divided in four parts: In the first part we have two articles, one on the history on the nature of light and the other on the scientific achievements of Ibn-Haitham (Alhazen) who is considered the father of modern optics. The second part contain articles on the certain sources of light whose discoveries have revolutionized the optical technology in our lifetime. These articles discuss the nature§and the characteristics of Laser, LED's, and more recent short pulse light sources. In the third part, many applications of optics and light in the present-day world are discussed in several articles. These applications include biophotonics, astronomy, art, optical communication, nanotechnology, solar cells, eye, remote sensing, electron optics, and optical illusions. The last part deals with quantum optics, a modern field that grew out of the interaction of light and matter. The topics include the nature of photon, atom optics, optical tests of the foundation of physics, nonlinear optics, optical cloaking, quantum communication, and coherent atomic effects.§§