Physics and Engineering of Graded-Index Media

Govind P. Agrawal

Aug 2023 · Cambridge University Press

About this ebook

Optical materials with varying refractive indices are called graded-index (GRIN) media and they are widely used within many industries, including telecommunications and medical imaging. Another recent application is space division multiplexing, an enormously improved technique for optical data transmission. This book synthesises recent research developments in this growing field, presenting both the underlying physical principles behind optical propagation in GRIN media, and the most important engineering applications. The principles of wave optics are employed for solving Maxwell's equations inside a GRIN medium, ensuring that diffractive effects are fully included. The mathematical development builds gradually and a variety of exact and approximate techniques for solving practical problems are included, in addition to coverage of modern topics such as optical vortices, photonic spin-orbit coupling, photonic crystals, and metamaterials. This text will be useful for graduate students and researchers working in optics, photonics and optical communications.

About the author

Govind P. Agrawal is James C. Wyant Professor of Optics at the University of Rochester. He is a Fellow of Optica, a Life Fellow of the IEEE, and a Distinguished Fellow of the Optical Society of India. He has been awarded the IEEE Photonics Society Quantum Electronics Award, the Riker University Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching, the Esther Hoffman Beller Medal, the Max Born Award of Optica, and the Quantum Electronics Prize of the European Physical Society. He has also served as Editor-in-Chief for the Optica journal Advances in Optics and Photonics. He is author, with Malin Premaratne, of Theoretical Foundations of Nanoscale Quantum Devices (Cambridge University Press, 2021).