This book remindedmeof the unforgettable creative atmosphere in the late 1960s in the laboratory ofmyPh.D. advisor N.G. Basov (at that time already a Nobel laureate in physics, who shared the prize in 1964 with A.M. Prokhorov and C.H. Townes). One of the experimental groups at that time includedV.S. Zuev, P.G. Kryukov, and R.V. Ambartsumyan, who were working on an exceptionally important problem !SGRK01
of amplifying nanosecond pulses in a cascade of ruby amplifiers to ignite a nuclear fusion reaction. I collaborated with this group trying to understand the challenging problems and questions that arose in the process of the experiments. One such problem, related to the strange behavior of a nanosecond pulse in a chain of amplifying crystals, led to the discovery of nonlinear propagation of a front of 1LvR,V<