LFU:online

At the end of this course the students should

• have understood conceps of classical, physical optics so that they can read related scientific literature,
• be able to reproduce classical and quantum optical descriptions of light-matter interactions and apply them to simple problems,
• be able to describe how lasers work and know the most common types of lasers, and 
• know how lasers are applied in spectroscopy.

This course is going to start with some advanced concepts in classical optics, such as raytracing, Gaussian beams, waveguides, and photonic crystals. We will then investigate light-matter interactions in order to lay the foundations for laser physics and laser spectroscopy of atoms, molecules, and solids.

Tablet-pc lecture, notes available on OLAT. For some topics, students will be able to try numerical methods on computers.

Term paper, review of a scientific article or small programming project.

• B. E. A. Saleh and M. C. Teich, Fundamentals of Photonics, 2nd ed., Wiley 2007. 
• R. Loudon, The Quantum Theory of Light, 3rd ed., Oxford University Press 2007.
• W. Demtröder, Laserspektroskopie, 4th ed. or newer, Springer 2004.

Optics (Physics 2, Theoretical Physics 3, etc.), Quantum theory, Solid-state physics, Atomic and molecular physics