Optical Properties of Nanostructured Random Media

This book reviews recent advances in one of the most prominent fields of physics. The optics of random media displays a rich variety of effects, and some of these effects are hardly intuitive. Localization of various sorts of optical excitations occur and recur in a wide gamut of disordered systems, such as inhomogeneous media, nanocomposite materials, layered structures, metal films and metal-dielectric composites. The contributors to the book are world best experts in the optics of random media; they provide a state-of-the-art review of recent developments in the field including nonlinear optical and magneto-optical properties, Raman and hyper-Raman scattering, laser action, plasmon excitation and localized giant fields, imaging and spectroscopy of random media.