This book offers a clear and interdisciplinary introduction to the structural and scattering properties of complex photonic media, focusing on deterministic aperiodic structures and their conceptual roots in geometry and number theory. It integrates important results and recent developments into a coherent and physically consistent story, balanced between mathematical designs, scattering and optical theories, and engineering device applications. The book includes discussions of emerging device applications in metamaterials and nano-optics technology. Both academia and industry will find the book of interest as it develops the underlying physical and mathematical background in partnership with engineering applications, providing a perspective on both fundamental optical sciences and photonic device technology. Emphasizing the comprehension of physical concepts and their engineering implications over the more formal developments, this is an essential introduction to the stimulating and fast-growing field of aperiodic optics and complex photonics.

‘This book is a modern and comprehensive account of light propagation in aperiodic media. It provides a solid, unified description of the basic theoretical tools and methods, and presents the unique optical properties and applications of aperiodic media, which usually cannot be achieved in traditional periodic and/or random photonic systems. It is an ideal introduction to this interdisciplinary, fascinating research field for graduate students and researchers in physics, electrical engineering, and applied physics.’

Felipe Pinheiro - Federal University of Rio de Janeiro

‘The very existence of orderings of matter which extend beyond mere regular periodicity, embracing quasiperiodic, hyperuniform, and deterministic aperiodic structural designs, emerges as a unifying theme blending the broad palette of topics covered in this magnificent book. In his intellectual tour-de-force Prof. Luca Dal Negro beautifully describes a lot of timely selected topics, including research fields as diverse as optical engineering, number theory, rogue waves, antenna theory, metamaterials, elliptic curves over finite fields, nano- plasmonics, chaotic dynamics, or cryptography (to name just a few), disclosing very appealing perspectives for their use in optical devices and technological applications. Quite remarkably, the main text is conveniently interspersed with many informative boxes and illustrative figures, carefully prepared by the author not only to provide a lot of useful information, but also aimed at spurring the reader to delve into deep insight considerations, naturally leading to far-reaching research subjects for the time to come.’

Enrique Maciá Barber - Complutense University of Madrid

‘Professor Dal Negro is to be commended for writing an outstanding and lucid treatise on the timely multidisciplinary topic of wave phenomena in complex media. He succeeds in presenting a wide range of important topics in a concise and effective manner, including basic topics in optics and scattering theories, emerging device applications in metamaterials and nano-optics technologies, state-of-the-art topics in the emerging fields of aperiodic and hyperuniform optics, among many other subjects and developments. Both researchers and practitioners will find this comprehensive book to be an invaluable resource.’

Salvatore Torquato - Princeton University

‘An excellent book that presents a systematic and comprehensive introduction to the fast growing field of complex photonics. The author takes you on an exciting journey from the general theory of electromagnetic waves all the way to fascinating aperiodic structures arising from number theory.’

Uwe Grimm - Open University

‘This is a fascinating book by an internationally renowned scholar and experienced educator in the field of complex photonics. It offers a well-balanced, extensive treatment of this exciting multidisciplinary topic in terms of electromagnetic scattering and diffraction phenomena in spatially aperiodic structures, with connection to the mathematical foundations in geometry and number theory, and with a view towards applications in optical devices and photonic technology. I highly recommend this book as an informative source for those working in this field and as an inspirational gateway for those interested in entering this research area.’

Nader Engheta - University of Pennsylvania