Light and X-Ray Optics

Contemporary optics is the foundation of many of today’s technologies including various focusing and defocusing devices, microscopies and imaging techniques. Light and X-ray Optis for Materials Scientists and Engineers offers a guide to basic concepts and provides an accessible framework for understanding this highly application-relevant branch of science for materials scientists, physicists, chemists, biologists, and engineers trained in different disciplines. The text links the fundamentals of optics to modern applications, especially for promotion of nanotechnology and life science, such as conventional, near-field, confocal, phase-contrast microscopies and imaging schemes based on interference and diffraction phenomena. Written by a noted expert and experienced instructor, the book contains numerous worked examples throughout to help the reader gain a thorough understanding of the concepts and information presented. The text covers a wide range of relevant topics, including reflection, refraction, and focusing phenomena, wave polarization and birefringence in crystals, optics in negative materials, metamaterials, and photonic structures, holography, light and X-ray interferometry, extensive description of diffraction optics, including dynamical X-ray diffraction, and more.

Author Biography

Emil Zolotoyabko is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. For six years he served as Faculty Dean and for four years as a member of the Technion’s Standing Committee. He was awarded the Schlesinger Prize for Encouragement of Research, the Henry Taub Prize for Excellence in Research, the Technion Excellence in Teaching, and held the Abraham Tulin Academic Chair. Emil Zolotoyabko has authored more than 200 scientific publications, four books and four chapters in books devoted to the development of new X-ray diffraction methods and their applications for studying the structure and dynamical characteristics of different materials systems. Main scientific achievements include: direct wave summation method in X-ray diffraction simulations; development of Mössbauer diffraction to study low-frequency lattice dynamics by inelastic scattering in crystals at phase transitions; fast stroboscopic X-ray diffraction and imaging techniques for investigating crystal dynamics on a nanosecond time scale; energy-variable X-ray diffraction for microstructural characterization with sub-micron spatial resolution; measurement of the speed of X-rays; discovery by high-resolution X-ray diffraction of the protein-associated anisotropic lattice distortions in biocomposites grown by living organisms.