Photonic Instrumentation: Sensing and Measuring with Lasers

Photonic Instrumentation: Sensing and Measuring with Lasersis designed as a source for university-level courses covering the essentials of laser-based instrumentation, and as a useful reference for working engineers. Photonic instruments have very desirable features like non-contact operation and unparalleled sensitivity. They have quickly become a big industrial success, passing unaffected through the bubble years and, not any less important, well-established methods in measurement science. This book offers coverage of the most proven instruments, with a balanced treatment of the optical and electronic aspects involved. It also attempts to present the basic principles, develop the guidelines of design and evaluate the ultimate limits of performances set by noise.

The instruments surveyed include: alignment instruments, such as wire diameter and particle size analyzers, telemeters, laser interferometers and self-mixing interferometers, and speckle pattern instruments, laser doppler velocimeters, gyroscopes, optical fiber sensors and quantum sensing. A few appendices offer convenient reference material for key principles on lasers, optical interferometers, propagation, scattering and diffraction.

Dr. Silvano Donati is Emeritus Professor of Optoelectronics at University of Pavia (Italy), Faculty of Engineering, Department of Electronics. Upon earning a degree in Physics with honours from University of Milano, he joined CISE, a famous research institution now merged with the Electrical Generating Board of Italy, where he worked on photodetectors and optoelectronic instrumentation. At University of Pavia he has been firstly a full-time lecturer, holding courses in Electronics Circuits Design, Electronic Materials and Technologies, and Electro-Optical Systems, then full professor in Optoelectronics in charge of courses on Photodetectors, Optoelectronic Instrumentation, and Optical Communications. Under his guidance, 120 Master students and 20 PhDs have graduated. He is a Life Fellow Member of IEEE, Life Fellow Member of Optica, and Meritorious member of AEI. He is also Member of several other Societies, including SPIE, IMAPS, and IoP.