Optics Using MATLAB^® provides a functional overview of the development of MATLAB code that can be used to enhance and increase one’s understanding of optics through the use of visualization tools. The book ties a variety of optical topics to MATLAB programming activities and can act as a supplement to other textbooks or can stand alone. Part I focuses on a wide range of basic programming fundamentals using MATLAB and includes such topics as curve fitting, image processing, and file storage. Part II provides a review of selected topics in optics and demonstrates how these can be explored using MATLAB scripts. Part III discusses how to use MATLAB to improve the usability of custom programs through graphical user interfaces and incorporation of other programming languages. Those who need flexibility and special calculations in their optical design or optical engineering work will find value in the book’s explanations and examples of user-programmable software.

Optical engineers make use of a wide variety of commercial software tools in the design, development, and testing of optical systems. These tools, no matter how excellent in their own right, can fall short of providing needed calculations. This need for flexibility and special calculations is the domain of user-programmable software.

Optics Using MATLAB^® was written to tie a number of optical topics into programming activities with MATLAB and can act as a supplement to other textbooks or stand alone. The book is divided into three parts: Part I has five chapters focused on a wide range of basic programing fundamentals using MATLAB and includes topics such as curve fitting, image processing, and file storage. The eight chapters of Part II provide a review of a number of selected topics in optics and demonstrate how these can be explored using MATLAB scripts. Part III discusses how to use MATLAB to improve the usability of custom programs through graphical user interfaces and incorporating other programming languages.

The book was designed such that you can get started on any chapter that catches your attention and seek more specialized information from the earlier chapters as needed. Some examples of the topics in Part II are thin film filters, spectrometers, polarization, complex index of refraction, and wavefront sensing.

Optics Using MATLAB provides a functional overview of developing code using MATLAB that can be used to enhance and increase the understanding of optics topics though the use of visualization tools. This book is not meant to be a fundamental treatment of optics, but rather a complement to the many excellent books on optics, while providing an example-based approach to understanding the underlying optical questions.

I greatly appreciate all of the colleagues and friends who have both directly and indirectly helped me in preparing and writing this book, and I am grateful for their unswerving and unselfish support. I also appreciate the feedback from the many students who over the years have helped me refine my optics and electronics lectures and laboratories.

While I have benefited from the support of many individuals in preparing this work, any errors that remain in the text are mine to fix. I would appreciate receiving any assistance in the form of comments and corrections. Please direct any correspondence to the author at scott.teare@nmt.edu.

Scott W. Teare
Professor of Electrical Engineering
New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology
Socorro, New Mexico
December 2016