"The book provides a concise description of the density matrix and statistical tensor formalism and presents a general approach to the description of angular correlation and polarization phenomena. It illustrate an application of the angular momentum technique to a broad variety of atomic processes.".

All optical fields undergo random fluctuations. They may be small, as in the output of many lasers, or they may be appreciably larger, as in light generated by thermal sources. The underlying theory of fluctuating optical fields is known as coherence theory. An important manifestation of the fluctuations is the phenomenon of partial polarization. Actually, coherence theory deals with considerably more than fluctuations. Unlike usual treatments, it describes optical fields in terms of observable quantities and elucidates how such quantities, for example, the spectrum of light, change as light propagates. This book is the first to provide a unified treatment of the phenomena of coherence and polarization. The unification has been made possible by very recent discoveries, largely due to the author of this book. The subjects treated in this volume are of considerable importance for graduate students and for research workers in physics and in engineering, who are concerned with optical communications, with propagation of laser beams through fibers and through the turbulent atmosphere, with optical image formation, particularly in microscopes, and with medical diagnostics, for example. Each chapter contains problems to aid self-study. Book jacket.

This book had its conception when Dr. Gudkov visited me in Austin in the Fall of 1995 and urged me to join him in writing a review of the field of magnetoacoustic polarization phenomena. I protested that, although my students and I had done some early work on this topic, most of the later work was done by researchers at the Institute for Metal Physics and by other investigators in the former Soviet Union. He eventually persuaded me that my initial contribution and general experience with magnetoacoustic phenomena qualified me to serve as a co-author. When I considered the fact that the extensive exploration of magnetoacoustic phenomena in the former Soviet Union was relatively unknown to Western scientists, I agreed to work with him on this project. In order to make the material more accessible to nonspecialists, we have adopted consistent notation throughout the text and redrawn the figures from published papers in a consistent fashion. Because our two institutions lie on opposite sides of the world, we needed some financial support to bring the book to fruition. We are very grateful to the Science Program for International Collaboration of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization for financial support through Grant No. HTECH. CRG 951549. I have dedicated this book to my wife, Janie, in recognition of the support she has given me throughout my professional career. J. D.

The chase and ultimate destruction of the German Battleship Bismarck in May 1941 is one of the epic stories of the naval side of World War II. It is told here in detail for the first time in English, full use having been made of the information now available from both British and German sources.--Dust jacket.

This book provides the reader with a modern and comprehensive overview of nuclear polarization theory. The understanding of polarization phenomena greatly enriches data obtained from scattering and nuclear reactions by providing information on the interaction that can change spin orientation as well as important verification data for the study of nuclear structures and reaction mechanisms. The author methodically derives the polarization theory of nuclear reactions for various types of elastic scattering and two-body direct reactions between particles of different spin and unpolarized target nuclei with arbitrary spin, as well as the reactions between two polarized light particles and the polarization theory for photon beams. In addition, the polarization theories of relativistic nuclear reactions are rigorously covered in great scope and detail. A chapter on polarized particle transport theory presents the Monte-Carlo method for describing the transport of polarized particles and formalizes the polarized particle transport equation. Here, the author also illustrates a novel and concrete scheme for establishing a polarization nuclear database. Nuclear polarization is important not only for microscopic nuclear structure and reaction studies but also for nuclear engineering, applied nuclear physics, and medical physics. With the development of radioactive beam facilities and, on the theoretical side, the development of consistent microscopic nuclear reaction and structure theories, this book on the polarization theory of nuclear reactions serves as a timely source of reference for students and researchers alike.