Over the past two decades, photonics, the use of photons for engineering applications, has gradually become established as a well-defined engineering discipline. Photonics has developed from studies in crystal optics, guided-wave optics, nonlinear optics, lasers, and semiconductor optoelectronics. Though many excellent books exist on each of these subjects, and several have been written specifically to address photonics, it is still difficult to find one book where the diverse core subjects that are central to the study of photonic devices are presented with a good balance of breadth and depth of coverage. Through my teaching of undergraduate courses, I have found it very effective to introduce the field of photonics to undergraduate students using the rigorous, systematic approach of this book. Through my experience of working with graduate students in research, I have found that such a book is very much needed to prepare a solid foundation for graduate students who intend to major, or minor, in photonics. Through my teaching experience, I have found it highly desirable and beneficial for both instructors and students to have ample examples and problems that are well thought out and fully integrated with the subjects covered in the text. This book is written to address these needs.

I began this project in early 1994 after many years of teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in lasers, nonlinear optics, quantum electronics, and quantum mechanics. Though I had already accumulated a large collection of classnotes and problem sets when I started this project, it still took me exactly nine years to finish writing this book, with fully one-third of that time devoted to the work on examples and problems.