Prior to the development of the first lasers in the 1960s, optical coherence was not a subject with which many scientists had much acquaintance, even though early contributions to the field were made by several distinguished physicists, including Max you Lane, Erwin Schrodinger and Frits Zernike. However, the situation changed once it was realized that the remarkable properties of laser light depended on its coherence. An earlier development that also triggered interest in optical coherence was

Preface
1 Elements of probability theory
1.1 Definitions
1.2 Properties of probabilities
1.2.1 Joint probabilities
1.2.2 Conditional probabilities
1.2.3 Bayes'theorem on inverse probabilities
1.3 Random variables and probability distributions
1.3.1 Transformations ofvariates
1.3.2 Expectations and moments
1.3.3 Chebyshev inequality
1.4 Generating functions
1.4.1 Moment generating function
1.4.2 Characteristic function
1.4.3 Cumulants
1.5 Some examples of probability distributions
1.5.1 Bernoulli or binomial distributiou
1.5.2 Poisson distribution
1.5.3 Bose-Einstein distribution
1.5.4 The weak law of large numbers
……
2 Random processes
3 Some useful mathematical techniques
4 Second-order Coherence theory of scalar wavefields
5 Radiation form sources of any state of coherence
7 Some applications of second-order coherence theory
8 Higher-order correlations in optical fields
9 Semiclassical theory of photoelectric detection of light
10 Quantization of the free electromagnetic field
11 Coherent states of the electromagnetic field
12 Quantum correlations and photon statistics
13 Radiation from thermal equilibrium sources
14 Quantum theory of photoelectric detection of light
15 Interaction between light and a two-level atom
16 Collective atomic interactions
17 Some general techniques for treating interacting systems
18 The single-mode laser
19 The two-mode ring laser
20 Squeezed states of light
22 Some quantum effects in nonlinear optics
References
Author index
Subject index