ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a brief description of the fundamental properties of light as described by Maxwell’s electromagnetic (EM) theory and the laws governing the propagation of light in isotropic materials. The goal is to summarize some of the most often used concepts and expressions such as Maxwell’s equations, wave equation, energy fl ow, the Poynting vector, irradiance, refl ection, refraction, and dispersion. We confi ne our discussion to isotropic and homogeneous materials, and mainly
to nonconducting materials with linear properties. Comprehensive description of propagation of light in anisotropic media, as well as refl ection and propagation of light in conducting media is given in Refs. [1,2]. This chapter concentrates on the wave character of light and does not consider the quantum nature of light. Coherence and polarization of light are not discussed in details here, because they are extensively described in Chapters 1 and 5, respectively. The detailed derivation of the fi nal formulae and equations presented here can be found in Refs. [1-5]. For introduction to the EM theory of light one can refer, to Refs. [4-10], while more detailed description of the concepts of modern optics are given in Refs. [11-15]. The fundamentals of electrodynamics, which is the basis of Maxwell’s EM theory and some of the mathematical methods used are presented in Refs. [16-19]. The books of Shen [20] and Boyd [21] are possible introductory text to the principles of nonlinear optics and some introductory articles on metrological methods that employ nonlinear optics [20-24]. For the specifi cs of interaction of light with holographic media, as well as principles, techniques, and applications of optical holography, one could refer to the text of Hariharan [25]. For an introduction to biomedical optics and propagation of light in live tissues, one can start with the book of Splinter and Hooper [26]. References [27-49] are only a short list of the liter ature devoted to the principles of nano-optics, evanescent fi elds, near-fi eld optical methods, and other optical methods for characterization of thin fi lms or nano-structures. At the end of this chapter, the reader fi nds a brief introduction to the newly emerging and quickly developing fi eld of artifi cially constructed metamaterials (MMs), which are of considerable interest because of their extraordinary EM properties [50-74]. There is a large amount of publications in all these areas and the ones referred to here are only a small fraction.
