Nonlinear Optics 4th Edition

Very good book, wished I read it sooner.

This book tells the theory on nonlinear interactions of light and matter thoroughly. It is a great tool for graduate and undergraduate who want to dig deeper into nonlinear optics.

Quality binding.

The field of nonlinear optics is actually much more general in scope than the name implies, and it finds large intersection with quantum mechanics, atomic physics and physical chemistry. It has applications in virtually all physical and life sciences. It's thus surprising that for such a useful and interesting subject, there would be such a shortage of good books! Fortunately, this book is excellent, and covers the subject thoroughly in both theory and application. An interesting feature of the book is that it covers the basic theory first from a classical perspective (i.e. nonlinear dipole polarization) and then rederives the basic results from semiclassical quantum theory. While the dielectric approach alone is adequate for solving problems (in fact, the quantum approach is useless in practice) the quantum background is fascinating to read and greatly helps in developing an intuitive picture of the physical mechanisms behind nonlinear processes. Boyd makes the nice choice of using Gaussian units, which is foreign to anybody but theoretical physics snobs but which eliminates a lot of useless notational complexity.Unfortunately, the book is sometimes terse and occasionally presents results without sufficient derivation, especially for advanced concepts and applications. However, when it comes to the foundational elements of nonlinear optics, the book is always thorough and the concepts well explained. Boyd clearly has a very deep understanding of the subject, and this shows in his writing.If you need to buy one book on nonlinear optics, this should probably be it. You might be temped to buy Shen or Bloembergen since they were such primary contributors to the field, but you will probably be disappointed in the quality of their exposition and confused by the notation.

If you are working in NLO, you simply have to have this book on your book-shelf. There's nothing to compare with it for the fundamentals, to gain a clear understanding of many different NLO processes.

This book is a comprehensive work including all the regular nonlinear phenomena like SHG, SFG, DFG, FWM, Raman and Brillouin Scatterings, and so on. Quantum mechanical theory of nonlinear optical susceptibility is on chapter 3 whereas chapter 6 is about nonlinear optics in two-level approximations which contains sections on optical Bloch equations and Rabi oscillations.Finally chapter 13 is on ultrafast nonlinear optics. We have to say that Professor Boyd has done a wonderful job on this book, since anyone from senior research scientists to first year graduate students all can refer to it.This book reminds me of Jackson's book on E &M in the sense that although you might not get `it' at that exact moment you can always count on it to show the correct way to tackle. All in all, if you are looking for a book on nonlinear optics this is the one you should have.

it is surprising to find that textbook like this did a remarkable good job in exploiting the density matrix formalism and also the related theoretical techniques in quantum dissipative systems. If you are interested in the quantum treatment, Chapter 3 and 6 are great!

Wonderful book. Easy to understand and very useful for every student, who needs a good background in the field of nonlinear optics

This book will have you on the edge of your seat all night long. This beautifully typeset masterpiece will pull at the strings of your heart over and over. It's hard to get through even the first half without being brought to the verge of tears.

非線形光学とは、光に対する物質の応答が一次ではなく高次である現象を学ぶ学問である。非線形光学現象によって、物質の様々な解析や加工に新しい手法を取り入れられている。このように非線形光学は近年開拓された新しい学問領域の一つでもある。　この本は非線形光学を学ぶ大学院生のためのテキストである。分光系の研究室ではよく輪読のテキストとして利用されている。内容は光学についての基礎知識が必要であり、式の導出や非線形光学現象の理解が難しいことも多い。他の参考書等も併用して勉強をすすめてもらいたい。