Integrated Optics: Theory and Technology

Book excerpt: Our intent in producing this book was to provide a text that would be comprehensive enough for an introductory course in integrated optics, yet concise enough in its mathematical derivations to be easily readable by a practicing engineer who desires an overview of the field. The response to the first edition has indeed been gratifying; unusually strong demand has caused it to be sold out during the initial year of publication, thus providing us with an early opportunity to produce this updated and improved second edition. This development is fortunate, because integrated optics is a very rapidly progressing field, with significant new research being regularly reported. Hence, a new chapter (Chap. 17) has been added to review recent progress and to provide numerous additional references to the relevant technical literature. Also, thirty-five new problems for practice have been included to supplement those at the ends of chapters in the first edition. Chapters I through 16 are essentially unchanged, except for brief updating revisions and corrections of typographical errors. Because of the time limitations imposed by the need to provide an uninterrupted supply of this book to those using it as a course text, it has been possible to include new references and to briefly describe recent developments only in Chapter 17. However, we hope to provide details of this continuing progress in a future edition.