AbstractsAstronomy & Space Science

The sixty publications selected for this thesis cover a period of forty years, from my time as a PhD student in the Physics Department of the University of Tasmania up to the present in 2002 as founding Professor of Electronic Engineering and Applied Physics and Director of the Centre for Advanced Telecommunications and Quantum Electronics at the University of Canberra. Many of the papers have been co-authored with research students and associates whose valued contributions I have acknowledged below. Unless otherwise stated I have only included accounts of work in which I have played a leading part. I have divided the papers, in some cases somewhat arbitrarily, into two groups which reflect my interests over this period: (a) Aeronomy, Astrophysics and Astronomy, and (b) Fluctuations, Noise and Quantum Electronics. Within these two groups I have attempted a further subdivision in which I have selected and presented papers to illustrate the development of specific concepts and lines of approach, usually in chronological order. This has meant the inclusion of a number of abstracts, short papers and two patent descriptions. (a) AERONOMY, ASTROPHYSICS AND ASTRONOMY The publications in this section cover a period of twenty seven years, starting with my PhD studies at the University of Tasmania in 1960. They include work performed at the University of Adelaide, the University of Texas at Dallas, the University of Otago and finally at the University of Canberra, prior to the commencement of my Work in the field of quantum electronics and quantum optics in 1989. (b) FLUCTUATIONS, NOISE AND QUANTUM ELECTRONICS The papers in this section have a common theme: the analysis of physical systems and processes in which random and chaotic fluctuations play an important part.