1. Preface

2. Chapter 1 - Introduction

3. Chapter 2 - Topological Features (with recent developments)

4. Chapter 3 - Generation and Detection methods (with recent developments, including new generation methods based on meta-materials)

5. Chapter 4 - Propagation Characteristics

6. Chapter 5 - Internal Energy flows

7. Chapter 6 - Vortices in computational Optics

8. Chapter 7 - Angular momentum of light

9. Chapter 8 - Applications

10. Chapter 9 - Polarization singularities (with recent developments)

11. Chapter 10 - Stokes Singularities

12. Applications (with recent developments)

13. Structured Light

The book gives a thorough introduction to singularities and their development. It explains in detail important topics such as the types of singularities, their properties, detection and application, and emerging research trends. The book concentrates on phase singularities in a comprehensive development to allow a greater understanding of singularities throughout the chapters and it discusses polarization singularities in-depth in its final chapter.

The first edition has 1642 downloads to date. In this second edition 100 new pages and up to 50 new figures will be added, and existing chapters are developed with new advances in the field. Two new chapters are added: Stokes Singularities (including generation, detection and applications of Stokes singularities. Higher-order Poincare spheres are introduced, along with their hybrids with modal spheres); and Structured Light (including special types of beams, optical lattices and engineered beams. Applications are also discussed).

Paramasivam Senthilkumaran is currently working as a professor in the Physics Department at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. He is also heading Optics and Photonics Centre at Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. He was a senior project officer and received his PhD from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras in 1995. He was a recipient of the Young Scientist Award from the Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi, and Alexander von Humboldt fellowship, Germany, in 1997 and 2001 respectively.

Senthilkumaran has been teaching undergraduate and postgraduate courses on a variety of subjects including basic physics, electromagnetic theory, optics and lasers, Fourier optics and holography. His research interests include optical beam shaping, optical phase singularities, Berry and Pancharatnam topological phases, fiber optics, holography, non-destructive testing techniques, shear interferometry, Talbot interferometry, speckle metrology and non-linear optics. He has authored/coauthored more than 150 research publications, has more than 15 years of experience researching singularities in optics, and has supervised sixteen doctoral theses.