ABSTRACT
Light is a wonderful gift of the world we live in. It is vital to almost all living beings on the planet of earth that senses, feels, and sees it. Witness the whole panorama of existence where we can see rich colors emanating from different objects that are relevant to our environment, e.g., scenery of rainbow colors, green forests, Œowery gardens, colorful birds, or even a lighting „reŒy. The nature of light is central to the „eld of optics over many centuries and is regarded as a key point in understanding its interaction with matter as well as any modern technologies involving light. The principles revealed through the exploration to unveil the nature of light are crucial for the renaissance of optics with the development of lasers, „ber optics, opto-electronics, and semiconductor photonic devices. To gain deeper knowledge of the physical phenomenon involving light, it is important to know its basic properties; for instance, reŒection, refraction, dispersion, polarization, interference, and diffraction which essentially contribute to underlying mechanisms. In this chapter, we will discuss the nature of light and some important concepts, processes, and optical technologies that are critical to the light-driven systems and leading-edge, modern optical actuator technologies used for realizing solutions in a wide variety of applications.
