Optics by Eugene Hecht
Accurate, comprehensive and precise, this revision provides students with the most up-to-date coverage of optics. Responsive to students' needs, the focus of the revision was to fine tune the pedagogy, modernize the discourse, and update the content. The third edition continues the gradually modernizing treatment of the previous edition by imparting an appreciation of the central role of atomic scattering, providing an understanding of the insightful perspective offered by the Fourier Theory, and by, from the outset, explicating the underlying quantum mechanical nature of light. Additionally, the third edition addresses all of today's significant technological advances. As always, Hecht provides a good balance of theory and instrumentation, while also providing readers with classical background. The writing style is lively and colorful, with historical anecdotes and citations, and at the request of previous edition users, Hecht has included about 125 new problems, designed primarily to develop students' analytic skills.