Principles and Applications of Fourier Optics

‘All of optics is Fourier optics!’ While this statement may not be literally true, when there is one basic mathematical tool to explain light propagation and image formation, with both coherent and incoherent light, as well as thousands of practical everyday applications of the fundamentals, Fourier optics is worth studying. This book contains !ve chapters with a summary of the principles of Fourier optics that have been developed over the past hundred years and two chapters with summaries of many applications over the past !fty years, especially since the invention of the laser. It is not necessary to take a new tack in explaining the principles. I have drawn liberally from the descriptions and notation of the authors of the classic texts on the topic, namely Professor Joseph V Goodman of Stanford University and Professor Jack D Gaskill of the University of Arizona. For applications that have evolved recently and are being reported even as this book goes to press, I have attempted to maintain the consistent notation and de!nitions of the early chapters, but deferred to the notation of the recent researchers where consulting the original papers with different notation would be confusing. This book is intended as a series of guideposts to improve our world through the applications of Fourier optics.