Senthilkumaran, Paramasivam creator author. Institute of Physics (Great Britain) publisher. text bibliography enk 2023 Second edition. monographic eng access 1 online resource (various pagings) : illustrations (some color). Singularities are ubiquitous in nature and generate high levels of interest and activity among scientists. At a singularity, a parameter of interest becomes indeterminate, a single point at which a mathematical quantity is not defined or not 'well behaved'. In optics, a singularity refers to a point at which some parameter describing the electromagnetic field becomes indeterminate. Even though at the singular point, things are not well defined, the neighbourhood points of a singularity are characterized by very large gradients and hence there is significant scope for new discoveries. Recent advances have gathered pace, and interest continues to grow in this field, and with its applications.Part of IOP Series in Advances in Optics, Photonics and Optoelectronics. 1. Introduction -- 1.1. Singularity -- 1.2. Singularities in science and engineering -- 1.3. Acoustic vortex -- 1.4. Singularities in optics -- 1.5. Amplitude, phase and polarization -- 1.6. Brief historical account of optical phase singularities 2. Topological features -- 2.1. Introduction -- 2.2. Wavefront shape -- 2.3. Amplitude and phase distribution of an optical vortex beam -- 2.4. Topological charge -- 2.5. Phase contours and zero crossings -- 2.6. Phase gradients of an optical vortex beam -- 2.7. Critical points -- 2.8. Zero crossings and bifurcation lines -- 2.9. Charge, order and index -- 2.10. Sign rules -- 2.11. Disintegrations or explosions -- 2.12. Charge conservation -- 2.13. Index conservation -- 2.14. Limitation on vortex density -- 2.15. Threads of darkness -- 2.16. Berry's paradox -- 2.17. Manifolds and trajectories -- 2.18. Links and knots -- 2.19. Different types of phase defects 3. Generation and detection methods -- 3.1. Introduction -- 3.2. Generation -- 3.3. Detection 4. Propagation characteristics -- 4.1. Introduction -- 4.2. Wave equations and solutions -- 4.3. Slowly varying envelope approximation : paraxial Helmholtz equation -- 4.4. Gouy phase -- 4.5. Divergence of singular beams -- 4.6. Near-core vortex structure and propagation -- 4.7. Propagation dynamics of optical phase singularities -- 4.8. Propagation of vortices in non-linear media 5. Internal energy flows -- 5.1. Energy flow -- 5.2. Internal energy flows -- 5.3. Visualizing internal energy flow -- 5.4. Focusing of singular beams : effect of aberrations -- 5.5. Experimental detection -- 5.6. Energy circulations in diffraction patterns 6. Vortices in computational optics -- 6.1. Introduction -- 6.2. Diffuse illumination in holography -- 6.3. Synthesized diffusers -- 6.4. Phase synthesis in computer-generated holograms -- 6.5. Stagnation problem in iterative Fourier transform algorithms -- 6.6. Solution to the speckle problem -- 6.7. Phase unwrapping in the presence of vortices -- 6.8. Non-Bryngdahl transforms using branch points -- 6.9. Diffraction of singular beams -- 6.10. Phase retrieval 7. Angular momentum of light -- 7.1. Introduction -- 7.2. Linear momentum -- 7.3. Angular momentum -- 7.4. Orbital and spin angular momentum of light -- 7.5. Intrinsic and extrinsic angular momentum 8. Applications -- 8.1. Metrology -- 8.2. Collimation testing -- 8.3. Spiral interferometry -- 8.4. Spatial filtering -- 8.5. Focal plane intensity manipulation -- 8.6. Stimulated emission depletion microscopy -- 8.7. Optical trapping and tweezers -- 8.8. Optically driven micro-motors -- 8.9. Communications -- 8.10. Phase-retrieval methods 9. Polarization singularities -- 9.1. Polarization of light -- 9.2. Stokes parameters and Poincar�e sphere representation -- 9.3. Stokes fields -- 9.4. Ellipse field singularities -- 9.5. Vector field singularities -- 9.6. Stokes phase -- 9.7. Topological features of polarization singularities -- 9.8. Angular momentum in polarization singularities -- 9.9. Generation -- 9.10. Detection -- 9.11. Inversion and conversion methods -- 9.12. Polarization singularity distributions -- 9.13. Optical M�obius strips -- 9.14. Applications 10. Stokes fields and singularities -- 10.1. Introduction -- 10.2. Polarization optics -- 10.3. Stokes parameters -- 10.4. Stokes fields -- 10.5. Discussion on Stokes formalism -- 10.6. Stokes singularities -- 10.7. Stokes space -- 10.8. Topological constructs -- 10.9. Degeneracy -- 10.10. Generation of Stokes singularities -- 10.11. Detection of Stokes singularities. Postgraduate students and research laboratories. specialized Paramasivam Senthilkumaran. "Version: 20240101"--Title page verso. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in print. Mode of access: World Wide Web. System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader, EPUB reader, or Kindle reader. Paramasivam Senthilkumaran is currently working as a professor in the Physics Department at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. He is also heading Optics and Photonics Centre at Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. He was a senior project officer and received his PhD from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras in 1995. He was a recipient of the Young Scientist Award from the Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi, and Alexander von Humboldt fellowship, Germany, in 1997 and 2001 respectively.Senthilkumaran has been teaching undergraduate and postgraduate courses on a variety of subjects including basic physics, electromagnetic theory, optics and lasers, Fourier optics and holography. His research interests include optical beam shaping, optical phase singularities, Berry and Pancharatnam topological phases, fiber optics, holography, non-destructive testing techniques, shear interferometry, Talbot interferometry, speckle metrology and non-linear optics. He has authored/coauthored more than 150 research publications, has more than 15 years of experience researching singularities in optics, and has supervised sixteen doctoral theses. Singularities (Mathematics) Optics Mathematics Mathematical physics Engineering mathematics Engineering Mathematical models Optical physics SCIENCE / Physics / Optics & Light QC20.7.S54 S467 2023eb Release 23 2023 collection 9780750349826 9780750349819 https://iopscience.iop.org/book/mono/978-0-7503-4982-6 https://iopscience.iop.org/book/mono/978-0-7503-4982-6 CaBNVSL 240201 20251030124215.0 9780750349826 eng