ISBN:0120451433Book Description
The Optical Society of America (OSA) and SPIE The International Society for Optical Engineering have awarded Govind Agrawal with an honorable mention for the Joseph W. Goodman Book Writing Award for his work on Nonlinear Fiber Optics, 3rd edition.
Nonlinear Fiber Optics, 3rd Edition, provides a comprehensive and up-to-date account of the nonlinear phenomena occurring inside optical fibers. It retains most of the material that appeared in the first edition, with the exception of Chapter 6, which is now devoted to the polarization effects relevant for light propagation in optical fibers. The contents include such important topics as self- and cross-phase modulation, stimulated Raman and Brillouin scattering, four-wave mixing, modulation instability, and optical solutons. A proper understanding of these topics is essential for scientists and engineers interested in various aspects of lightwave technology.
Such an ambitious objective increased the size of the book to the extent that it was necessary to create a separate but complimentary book, Applications of Nonlinear Fiber Optics, which is devoted to applications in the domain of lightwave technology.
This revised edition of Nonlinear Fiber Optics should serve well the needs of the scientific community including graduate students in Optics, Physics, and Electrical Engineering, engineers in the optical communication industry, and scientists working in fiber optics and nonlinear optics.
* Only book dealing with Nonlinear Fiber Optics
* Comprehensive up-to-date coverage of the entire field
* Problems at the end of each chapter suitable for a course
* Focus on fundamental aspects
* Can be used by graduate students doing research in or taking courses in nonlinear optics and optical communications/p>
Reviews From AMAZON.COM
One of the best book I've ever red on nonlinear optics.
I'm absolutly sure that everyone can find something useful in this book, no matter who you are - a novice in this subject or well experienced researcher in optics.
This book is also useful as a reference book on nonlinear effects. I very often find this book in hand.
A quantitative text on nonlinear fiber optics
This is a serious book written at a graduate-student or advanced-under-graduate level for the practicing professional employed in designing optical telecommunications systems and components. I don't think the book was written with students particularly in mind, since (for example) there are no examples or problems in the book as typically found in university course work In his introduction, Agrawal says "[t]he book is aimed for researchers already engaged in or wishing to enter the filed of nonlinear fiber optics." As the title suggests, the book's emphasis is on nonlinear effects in optical fibers, as opposed to nonlinear effects in bulk materials.
The first chapter is pretty basic, and is mostly review material that describes things like the index cross section in an optical fiber, material issues, fabrication, chromatic dispersion, modal birefringence (which leads to polarization mode dispersion), non linear refraction and stimulated inelastic scattering. The review here is pretty brief (the chapter has only about 25 pages).
Chapter two develops the mathematics of wave propagation in optical fibers, including the mathematics of mode propagation and basic propagation equations derived from Maxwell's equations. This chapter actually develops several different differential equations; each based on various assumptions applicable to different pulse widths. These differential equations then form the basis for later investigations into various non-linear effects discussed in the book. Chapter two is thus a foundational chapter and should be read and understood completely before moving on. There is a brief discussion at the end of the chapter that describes numerical methods.
Chapter three describes group-velocity dispersion, including chromatic dispersion as well as dispersion-induced pulse broadening and higher-order dispersion and their implications for optical systems.
Chapter four introduces self-phase modulation and self steepening.
Chapter five describes optical solitons (including fundamental and higher order solitions), soliton lasers, and soliton-based communications systems.
Chapter 6 describes some techniques for optical pulse compression using gratings and chirped optical pulses. It also describes soliton-effect compressors.
Chapter 7 is devoted to the subject of cross-phase modulation, chapter 8 to stimulated Raman scattering, chapter 9 to stimulated Brillouin scattering, and chapter 10 to parametric processes, including four-wave mixing, parametric gain, and phase matching.
The book is quantitative, making (as you'd expect in a graduate text) liberal use of mathematics. The level of mathematics, however, should be well within the grasp of senior college students majoring in physics, engineering, or mathematics. The subject, however, is non-trivial, and you should expect this book to present a real intellectual challenge in reading and understanding all the details. I took about six months to finish the book, including time taken to fill in some details in the derivations and to plot some of the equations on my computer.
Agrawal makes good use of figures and illustrations, which I found particularly helpful. The book also has an adequate index that makes the book more valuable as a desk reference.
Each chapter cites a wealth of reference material in the literature so that any subject covered within its pages can be studied in more detail and from the original sources.
I would not make this a first study of nonlinear optics (although it was for me). Rather, I'd look for texts that discuss nonlinear effects qualitatively, and I'd try to expose myself to experiments that illustrate these nonlinear effects to gain a more qualitative understanding before diving into Agrawal's mathematical derivations. With a more qualitative basis first acquired, however, Agrawal's book is an invaluable tool for understanding the most obscure nonlinear effects in optical fibers.