LFU:online

The course is aimed at PhD students working in disciplines which employ electrodynamic optics for their research. The goal is to enable the students to discriminate between the various regimes of optics, which they encounter in their daily work and to provide them with the analytical and numerical tools to calculate the propagation of classical light waves in these regimes. Conventional black-board lectures will be combined with numerical exercises to solve typical laboratory problems. Only fundamental knowledge of electrodynamics will be required as well as some basic programming experience in MATLAB or Mathematica. Preliminary experience in optical experiments or modelling or from related undergraduate lectures will be helpful but is not necessary.

In the frame of this course, “classical optics” refers to the propagation of light (UV to IR) in media, making use of the vectorial wave character of light, but not of its quantized nature. The following topics will be covered:

• Reiteration of Maxwell’s equations, derivation of the various regimes (scalar vs. vectorial, paraxial vs. non-paraxial, monochromatic vs. polychromatic, linear vs. non-linear, … ) and their fundamental equations

• Propagation of paraxial beams and of pulses in space and time

• Diffraction theory - near field and far field propagation, Fourier optics

• Optics at interfaces and in layered media - boundary conditions, transfer matrix formalism

• Optical waveguides and fibers - eigenmodes and their dispersion, analogy between quantum mechanics and optics, light injection, evanescent coupling, applications

• (optional) Polarisation optics - birefringent crystals, normal modes, Jones-calculus

• (optional) Nonlinear optics - second & third-order nonlinear effects, pulse propagation in nonlinear fibers, solitons

The grade will be determined from the numerical exercises. 3-4 exercises will be held during the course.