Photonics Handbook

Except for direct illumination from the sun, laser, or other light source, everything we see or detect is ultimately scattered light. Light can be scattered or rescattered during its propagation to...

Electrical engineers are very familiar with the effects of shot noise, thermal noise, flicker noise and crosstalk, and recognize how these effects can reduce the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in their...

There are three fundamental properties of light: intensity, wavelength, and polarization. Almost all cameras today are designed for monochrome or color imaging. A monochrome camera is used to measure...

By its original definition, a nanopositioning device is a mechanism capable of repeatedly delivering motion in increments as small as one nanometer. Lately demands from industry and research have...

Optical design software allows the user to develop a configuration of optical elements that manipulate the trajectory of light for the purposes of creating an image, illuminating a target, coupling...

Over 60 years have passed since the first demonstration of a laser in 1960. After the initial spark of interest, lasers were for a while categorized as “a solution waiting for a problem,”...

What are thin-film coatings? The purpose of any optical thin-film coating is to modify the transmittance and reflectance properties of the substrate material to which they are applied. Most coatings...

An integrating sphere’s function is to spatially integrate radiant flux (light). However, before one can optimize a sphere design for a particular application, it is important to understand how...

In their earliest forms, UV bandpass filters that were optimized for wavelengths less than 400 nm, such as the Schott UG or the Hoya U-series, were constructed of absorbing compounds in glass. Such...

The use of precision polymer optics is becoming an increasing necessity today as products demand sophisticated light handling components to achieve desired results. Polymer optics can be thought of...

All optical spectrometry techniques rely on the measurement of radiant power. The configuration of the instrument varies based on the measurement technique: absorption, emission, luminescence, or...

Manufacturing the laser diode is complicated by the existence of multiple proprietary techniques and intellectual property barriers together with complex device physics and unique materials. ...

That portion of the spectrum that the eye can see — and its rainbow of colors — is rather small, covering approximately 360 to 830 nm. What colors we perceive depends on wavelength, while...

The common polycrystalline materials used for optical thin-film materials do not satisfy the requirements of telecommunications because of the instabilities caused by moisture absorption in their...

Optics today needs alchemy, and the forces that motivate microchip technology are a key reason why. Today, light can transmit and process digital information as well as electricity can — in...

When physical structures get very small — on the order of molecular or atomic sizes with one or more dimensions on the nanoscale — their behavior and interactions with energy, including...

Plate beamsplitters Plate beamsplitters consist of a thin plate of optical crown glass with a different type of coating deposited on each side. The first surface is coated with an all-dielectric...

Lenses come in a variety of shapes, sizes and materials. They can be made of a single piece of glass or have multiple elements; their surfaces can be spherical, aspheric or cylindrical; they can be...

The scope of optical spectroscopic instrumentation is indeed very broad. Many analytical methods rely on the interaction of radiation with matter and are often described in the context of quantum and...

There are three fundamentally different dispersive phenomena in optical fiber, of which polarization mode dispersion (PMD) is the most complex. In digital multimode fiber systems, a light pulse...

Laser diodes vary widely in their wavelengths, powers, spectra and beam quality. Yet they share two fundamental components with all other lasers: an optical amplifier and a resonator that confines...

As bit rates increase to meet expanding demand, systems have become increasingly sensitive to polarization-related impairments. These include polarization mode dispersion (PMD) in optical fibers,...