Pochi Yeh, PhD, is Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at University of California, Santa Barbara. He is known for several important contributions in optics, including the development of a matrix method for optics of layered media, the theory of photorefractive phase conjugators, and the theory of wave mixing in nonlinear media. Claire Gu, PhD, is Professor of Electrical Engineering at University of California, Santa Cruz. She has published more than 200 journal and conference papers and, in 2007, was elected a Fellow of SPIE (The International Society of Optical Engineering).

• Preface. Preface to the First Edition.Chapter 1. Preliminaries.1.1. Basic Components of LCDs.1.2 Properties of Liquid Crystals.Chapter 2. Polarization of Optical Waves.2.1. Monochromatic Plane Waves and Their Polarization States.2.2. Complex Number Representation.2.3. Jones Vector Representation.2.4. Partially Polarized and Unpolarized Light.2.5. Poincaré Sphere.Chapter 3. Electromagnetic Propagation in Anisotropic Media.3.1. Maxwell Equations and Dielectric Tensor.3.2. Plane Waves in Homogeneous Media and Normal Surface.3.3. Light Propagation in Uniaxial Media.3.4. Double Refraction at a Boundary. 3.5. Anisotropic Absorption and Polarizers.3.6. Optical Activity and Faraday Rotation.3.7. Light Propagation in Biaxial Media.Chapter 4. Jones Matrix Method.4.1. Jones Matrix Formulation.4.2. Intensity Transmission Spectrum.4.3. Optical Properties of TN-LC (Adiabatic Following or Waveguiding).4.4. Phase Retardation at Oblique Incidence.4.5. Conoscopy.4.6. Reflection Property of a General TN-LCD with a Back Mirror. 4.7. Phase Retardation of a Biaxial Plate.4.8. Achromatic Wave Plates.4.9. Broadband Quasi-Circular Polarizers.4.10. Wide Field-of-View Elements.Chapter 5. Liquid Crystal Displays.5.1. VA-LCDs.5.2. IPS-LCDs.5.3 TN-LCDs.5.4. STN Displays.5.5. Nematic Liquid Crystal Display (N-LCD) Modes.5.6. Polymer-Dispersed Liquid Crystal Displays (PD-LCDs).5.7. Reflective LCDs.5.8. Transflective LCDs.5.9. Projection Displays.5.10. Other Display Systems.5.11. Summary.Chapter 6. Matrix Addressing, Colors, and Properties of LCDs.6.1. Multiplexed Displays.6.2. Active Matrix (AM) Displays.6.3. Optical Throughput of TFT-LCDs.6.4. Colors in LCDs.Chapter 7. Optical Properties of Cholesteric Liquid Crystals.7.1. Optical Phenomena in CLCs.7.2. Dielectric Tensor of an Ideal CLC.7.3. Exact Solutions at Normal Incidence.7.4. Bragg Regime (nop < λ < nep)—Coupled-Mode Analysis.7.5. Mauguin Regime (λ << 0.5 pΔn).7.6. Circular Regime.Chapter 8. Extended Jones Matrix Method.8.1. Mathematical Formulation and Applications.8.2. Another Extended Jones Matrix Method.8.3. 4 × 4 Matrix Method.8.4. General Properties of A 4 × 4 Matrix. 8.5. Mueller Matrix Algebra and Jones Matrix Algebra.8.6. Reciprocity Theorem in Anisotropic Layered Media.Chapter 9. Optical Compensators for Liquid Crystal Displays.9.1. Viewing Angle Characteristics of LCDs.9.2. Origin of Leakage of Light in LCDs and Compensators.9.3. LCDs with Compensators.9.4. Compensation Film with Positive Birefringence (O-Plate).9.5. Biaxial Compensation Film.9.6. Materials for Optical Phase Retardation Compensation.Appendix A. Elastic and Electromagnetic Energy Density.Appendix B. Electro-Optical Distortion—Tilt Mode.Appendix C. Electro-Optical Distortion—Twist Mode.Appendix D. Electro-Optical Distortion in a TN-LC.Appendix E. Electro-Optical Distortion in an STN-LC.Appendix F. Form Birefringence of Composite Media.Appendix G. Spherical Trigonometry.Appendix H. Mie Scattering and Diffusers.Appendix I. Variational Principles and Lagrange’s Equations.Author Index.Subject Index.

"The book will be immensely helpful to young engineers in R and D to master the topics and make itcomfortable for students to progress in the field. I highly recommend Yeh and Gu's second edition." (Current Engineering Practice, 1 November 2010)