This is the first volume of textbooks on atomic, molecular and optical physics, aiming at a comprehensive presentation of this highly productive branch of modern physics as an indispensable basis for many areas in physics and chemistry as well as in state of the art bio- and material-sciences. It primarily addresses advanced students (including PhD students), but in a number of selected subject areas the reader is lead up to the frontiers of present research. Thus even the active scientist is addressed. This volume 1 provides the canonical knowledge in atomic physics together with basics of modern spectroscopy. Starting from the fundamentals of quantum physics, the reader is familiarized in well structured chapters step by step with the most important phenomena, models and measuring techniques. The emphasis is always on the experiment and its interpretation, while the necessary theory is introduced from this perspective in a compact and occasionally somewhat heuristic manner, easy to follow even for beginners.

Ingolf V. Hertel Born 1941 in Dresden, 1967 Diplom in Physics, Uni Freiburg/Br., PhD thesis in Southampton UK, 1969 Dr. rer. nat. Uni Freiburg, Assistant Uni Mainz, 1970 Associate Professor Uni Kaiserslautern, 1978 Full Professor Experimental Physics FU Berlin, 1986 Full Professor Uni Freiburg, Extended Research Periods in Boulder CO USA and Orsay France, 1992 to 2009 Director at Max Born Institute for Nonlinear Optics and Short Pulse Spectroscopy in Berlin- Adlershof, 1993 to 2009 also Full Professor FU Berlin, since 2010 Wilhelm und Else Heraeus Senior Professor HU at Berlin. Claus-Peter Schulz Born 1953 in Berlin, 1984 Diplom in Physics TU Berlin, 1987 Dr. rer. nat. FU Berlin, Postdoc at JILA Boulder CO USA, 1988 Assistant Uni Freiburg, since 1993 Scientist at Max Born Institute for Nonlinear Optics and Short Pulse Spectroscopy in Berlin-Adlershof, Extended Research Periods at Universit e Paris-Nord and Orsay France as well as in Boulder CO USA.