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Joseph W. Goodman: Speckle Phenomena in Optics: Theory and Applications

Article  in  Journal of Statistical Physics · January 2008

DOI: 10.1007/s10955-007-9440-8

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Journal Name Journal of Statistical Physics

Article Title Joseph W. Goodman: Speckle Phenomena in Optics: Theory and
Applications
Corresponding Author Family name Freund
Particle
Given Name Isaac
Suffix
Division Physics Department
Organization Bar-Ilan University
Address Ramat-Gan, 52900, Israel
E-mail freund@mail.biu.ac.il
Schedule Received 9 September 2007
Revised
Accepted 13 September 2007
Abstract
Keywords
Footnotes
« JOSS 10955 layout: Small Condensed v.1.2 reference style: mathphys file: joss9440.tex (Nadia) aid: 9440 doctopic: BookReview class: spr-small-v1.1 v.2007/09/11 Prn:20/09/2007; 13:06 p. 1»

J Stat Phys
AUTHOR’S PROOF
DOI 10.1007/s10955-007-9440-8
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Joseph W. Goodman: Speckle Phenomena in Optics:
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6 Theory and Applications
7 Roberts & Company (Englewood, Colorado), 2007

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10 Isaac Freund
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Received: 9 September 2007 / Accepted: 13 September 2007

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© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2007
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This is the age of coherent optics, with coherent sources, available from the microwave
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21 to the x-ray region of the spectrum, in daily use everywhere. Virtually synonymous with
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22 coherence is interference. When a coherent source illuminates an object that is rough on
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23 the scale of a wavelength, as most objects are, the interference of the many partial waves
24 in the reflected light, with their random amplitudes and phases, produces the phenomenon
25 known as “speckle”: as the name implies, this is a complex pattern of bright and dark areas.
26 Beginning in the nineteen seventies, and continuing unabated up to today, research papers
on speckle and its myriad applications have been, and still are, published at an astonishing
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28 average rate of more than one a day!
29 Speckle is here to stay—is it friend or foe? That depends upon how much you know
30 about it, which is where Goodman’s book comes in.
31 Who is this book for? Well, if you want to know not only what optical coherence tomog-
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32 raphy is and how it works, but also why it works, this is the book for you (Chap. 6). If you
33 want to know why your coherent matter-wave Bose-Einstein condensates seem to be devel-
34 oping measles, and what you can do about that, study Chap. 5. If your speckle patterns show
35 what you think are exciting new statistics, and you want to avoid making a fool of yourself
36 in PRL, read Chap. 4 before submitting. This is also the book for you if you want an easily
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37 digested short course in statistical optics (for undergraduates use Chaps. 1–3, for graduate
38 students add Chap. 4); if meeting your mortgage payments depends on your getting rid of
39 that pesky clutter in your ground penetrating radar images (read Chap. 7); if the patent of-
40 fice turned down your application for a laser speckle profiler because the examiner couldn’t
41 understand your explanation of how it worked (go over Chap. 8); if . . . So who is this book
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42 for—the simple answer is: who isn’t it for?

43 If you already have Goodman’s book on Statistical Optics, and his book on Fourier Op-
44 tics, and a dozen CDs containing countless original papers on speckle and related phenom-
45 ena, you might wonder if you need this book. Probably not—if you already know and under-
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I. Freund ()
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Physics Department, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan 52900, Israel
49 e-mail: freund@mail.biu.ac.il
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Journal ID: 10955, Article ID: 9440, Date: 2007-09-20, Proof No: 1 PDF-OUTPUT
« JOSS 10955 layout: Small Condensed v.1.2 reference style: mathphys file: joss9440.tex (Nadia) aid: 9440 doctopic: BookReview class: spr-small-v1.1 v.2007/09/11 Prn:20/09/2007; 13:06 p. 2»

J Stat Phys
AUTHOR’S PROOF
51 stand most of the stuff in your collection. But if you don’t, and you hope to one day know
52 and understand even just part of that stuff, your best bet is to start with this book.
53 I knew something about most of the many topics that Goodman discusses, but I cheerfully
54 admit that before reading the book there was an awful lot I didn’t know, and even more
55 I didn’t understand. One of the great things about Speckle Phenomena in Optics is that
56 Goodman carefully explains not only the important what’s, but also the why’s. If you want
57 to dig deeper, and in many cases you will probably find that you don’t need to, there is a

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58 bibliography with 183 citations to the most important papers and treatises in the various
59 fields discussed, most citations being introduced in the text with a brief statement of their

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60 contents. There are also six appendices containing the heavy math that would otherwise have
61 cluttered up the text, as well as many useful results that would be hard to find elsewhere.
62 Of course, like any reviewer, I felt I wouldn’t be doing my job if I couldn’t find something
63 to criticize. Typos are usually good for this, and I did manage to find one in the x-axis label
64 of Fig. 2.4. A more serious criticism is directed at the publisher: the arguments of many

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65 exponentials are set in such small type that you might need a magnifying glass to read what
66 is there, as I did. One hopes that this will be corrected in the next edition.
67 Authors want their books to be timeless, publishers, who have costs to recover, would
68 undoubtedly opt for timely, whereas readers want books that are really useful. Speckle Phe-
69 nomena in Optics: Theory and Applications, with its wonderfully clear first four chapters on
fundamentals, and its remaining in-depth four on the most important applications in imag-
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71 ing, holography, metrology, fiber optics, and more, will satisfy everyone.
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Journal ID: 10955, Article ID: 9440, Date: 2007-09-20, Proof No: 1
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