
1
INTRODUCTION
Over recent decades, the academic study of optics has migrated from physics departments to
a variety of engineering departments. In electrical engineering, the interest in optics followed
the pattern of interest electromagnetic waves at lower frequencies that occurred during and
after World War II, with the growth of practical applications such as radar. More recently,
optics has found a place in other departments such as mechanical and chemical engineering,
driven in part by the use in these elds of optical techniques such as interferometry to measure
small displacements, velocimetry to measure velocity of moving objects, and various ...