Syllabus

Download a full course syllabus here.

Course Description

From observing the cosmos to single cells, understanding optics is what has allowed us to visualize the unseen world. This laboratory course provides an overview of the theoretical techniques and experimental tools used to analyze light and its properties. The course will encompass three broad approaches to understanding the behavior of light, geometrical optics, wave optics, and quantum optics. Through the manipulation of light using lenses, polarizers, and single-photon detectors, students will learn the physics that underlies microscopes, spectrometers, lasers, modern telecommunication, and human vision.

Optics is also a wonderful microcosm reflecting much of the rest of physics: the techniques that we use to study the bending of light rays as they move through materials inspired related techniques in the advanced treatments of classical mechanics and the movement of particles through the curved spacetimes of general relativity; the wave theory of optics gives concrete examples of the interference and diffraction phenomena that are ubiquitous in a much more abstract quantum theory; evanescent waves in optics even give a precise analog for the remarkable possibility of quantum tunneling through barriers. The conceptual foundations that you lay in this class will be useful to your throughout your studies of the physical world. The fact that this conceptual richness permeates one of the most technologically applicable areas within physics is a delight!