In Java, serialization is the process of converting an object into a stream of bytes so that it can be stored on disk or transmitted over a network. Deserialization is the reverse process of converting a stream of bytes back into an object.

Java provides a built-in mechanism for serialization and deserialization through the java.io.Serializable interface. To enable serialization for an object, you need to implement the Serializable interface. Here's an example:

import java.io.*;

public class Person implements Serializable {
    private String name;
    private int age;

    public Person(String name, int age) {
        this.name = name;
        this.age = age;
    }

    public String getName() {
        return name;
    }

    public int getAge() {
        return age;
    }
}

In this example, we've defined a Person class that implements the Serializable interface. This means that instances of the Person class can be serialized and deserialized using Java's built-in serialization mechanism.

To serialize an object, you can use a ObjectOutputStream and write the object to a file or a stream:

Person person = new Person("John Doe", 30);

try (ObjectOutputStream oos = new ObjectOutputStream(new FileOutputStream("person.ser"))) {
    oos.writeObject(person);
} catch (IOException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
}

In this example, we create a Person object and serialize it to a file called person.ser using an ObjectOutputStream.

To deserialize an object, you can use a ObjectInputStream to read the object from a file or a stream:

try (ObjectInputStream ois = new ObjectInputStream(new FileInputStream("person.ser"))) {
    Person person = (Person) ois.readObject();
    System.out.println("Name: " + person.getName());
    System.out.println("Age: " + person.getAge());
} catch (IOException | ClassNotFoundException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
}

In this example, we deserialize the Person object from the person.ser file using an ObjectInputStream and print out its name and age.