Photonics and Optics Fundamentals, fall 2023

This is an advanced-level course; in Finnish we'd say "syventäviä opintoja". See below for the background you should have.

After completing the course, the student will be able to:

• Understand the importance of light and photonics
• Understands the nature of light as waves and photons.
• Understands the polarization of light.
• Understands how one can control the polarization of light with different components.
• Understands emission, absorption, and scattering of light.
• Understands reflection and refraction of light.
• Can calculate the direction and the magnitude of reflected and refracted light for a planar interface.
• Understands the interference of light.
• Understands the double-slit experiment.
• Understands the principle of and interferometer.
• Can calculate the directions of the diffraction orders after the diffraction grating.
• Can calculate the field after a simple aperture system.
• Understands the connection between the geometrical and wave approach of light propagation.
• Can analyze light in simple optical components like lenses and mirrors.
• Understands imaging in a simple optical system.
• Can calculate imaging in a simple lens or mirror system.
• Understands how one can characterize the quality of imaging.
• Knows what are the aberrations in an imaging system.

You should know the following before coming to this course; but there a sections in the course material that you can use to update your knowledge on those topics:

• Basics of mechanics like energy, potential, and momentum.
• Basics of linear algebra and matrices.
• Basics of electromagnetism.
• Basic calculation with complex numbers and complex functions.
• Basics of differential and integral calculation.
• Basics of trigonometry.
• Vectors and calculations with those.
• Also it is helpful to understand the basics of quantum mechanics like the quantization of energy.

Simply put, if you can deal with intermediate-level university physics ("aineopinnot"), you'll be just fine.

In Finnish, this course is called "Fotoniikan ja optiikan perusteet", but since it's available only in English, we've listed it only under the English name.