The advent of lasers in the 1960s led to the development of many new fields in optical
physics. This book is a systematic treatment of one of these fields--the broad area that deals
with the coherence and fluctuation of light. The authors begin with a review of probability
theory and random processes, and follow this with a thorough discussion of optical
coherence theory within the framework of classical optics. They next treat the theory of
photoelectric detection of light and photoelectric correlation. They then discuss in some …