Light and light based technologies have played an important role in transforming our lives via scientific contributions spanned over thousands of years. In this book we present a vast collection of articles on various aspects of light and its applications in the contemporary world at a popular or semi-popular level. These articles are written by the world authorities in their respective fields. This is therefore a rare volume where the world experts have come together to present the developments in this most important field of science in an almost pedagogical manner. This volume covers five aspects related to light. The first presents two articles, one on the history of the nature of light, and the other on the scientific achievements of Ibn-Haitham (Alhazen), who is broadly considered the father of modern optics. These are then followed by an article on ultrafast phenomena and the invisible world. The third part includes papers on specific sources of light, the discoveries of which have revolutionized optical technologies in our lifetime. They discuss the nature and the characteristics of lasers, Solid-state lighting based on the Light Emitting Diode (LED) technology, and finally modern electron optics and its relationship to the Muslim golden age in science. The book’s fourth part discusses various applications of optics and light in today's world, including biophotonics, art, optical communication, nanotechnology, the eye as an optical instrument, remote sensing, and optics in medicine. In turn, the last part focuses on quantum optics, a modern field that grew out of the interaction of light and matter. Topics addressed include atom optics, slow, stored and stationary light, optical tests of the foundation of physics, quantum mechanical properties of light fields carrying orbital angular momentum, quantum communication, and Wave-Particle dualism in action.

Optics is a science which covers a very large domain and is experiencing indisputable growth. It has enabled the development of a considerable number of instruments, the optical component or methodology of which is often the essential part of portent systems. This book sets out show how optical physical phenomena such as lasers – the basis of instruments of measurement – are involved in the fields of biology and medicine. Optics in Instruments: Applications in Biology and Medicine details instruments and measurement systems using optical methods in the visible and near-infrared, as well as their applications in biology and medicine, through looking at confocal laser scanning microscopy, the basis of instruments performing in biological and medical analysis today, and flow cytometry, an instrument which measures at high speed the parameters of a cell passing in front of one or more laser beams. The authors also discuss optical coherence tomography (OCT), which is an optical imaging technique using non-contact infrared light, the therapeutic applications of lasers, where they are used for analysis and care, and the major contributions of plasmon propagation in the field of life sciences through instrumental developments, focusing on propagating surface plasmons (PSP) and localized plasmons (LP). Contents: 1. Confocal Laser Scanning Microscopy, Thomas Olivier and Baptiste Moine. 2. Flow Cytometry (FCM) Measurement of Cells in Suspension, Odile Sabido. 3. Optical Coherence Tomography, Claude Boccara and Arnaud Dubois. 4. Therapeutic Applications of Lasers, Geneviève Bourg-Heckly and Serge Mordon. 5. Plasmonics, Emmanuel Fort. About the Authors Jean-Pierre Goure is Emeritus Professor of optics at Jean Monnet University in Saint-Etienne, France, and was previously director of the UMR 5516 laboratory linked with CNRS. He is the author of more than 100 publications in various fields, such as spectroscopy, instrumentation, sensors, optical fiber and optical communications. He was also previously deputy director in engineering science at CNRS and a member of several scientific associations such as the French Optical Society and the European Optical Society.

This third edition of the biomedical optics classic Tissue Optics covers the continued intensive growth in tissue optics—in particular, the field of tissue diagnostics and imaging—that has occurred since 2007. As in the first two editions, Part I describes fundamentals and basic research, and Part II presents instrumentation and medical applications. However, for the reader’s convenience, this third edition has been reorganized into 14 chapters instead of 9. The chapters covering optical coherence tomography, digital holography and interferometry, controlling optical properties of tissues, nonlinear spectroscopy, and imaging have all been substantially updated. The book is intended for researchers, teachers, and graduate and undergraduate students specializing in the physics of living systems, biomedical optics and biophotonics, laser biophysics, and applications of lasers in biomedicine. It can also be used as a textbook for courses in medical physics, medical engineering, and medical biology.