Photonics Handbook

Photonics is the study of light and other types of radiant energy whose quantum unit is the photon. The impact of photonics on research, technology, navigation, culture, astronomy, forensics, and...

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...

Silicon photonics is widely considered a key enabling technology for further development of optical interconnect solutions needed to address growing traffic on the internet. From the first submarine...

The benefits of aspheric lenses are numerous: They allow for a reduction in spherical aberrations and are ideal for focusing or collimating light, as they can achieve a low ƒ-number. Aspheres...

Technological advances have resulted in new, higher-quality sensors that enable machine vision cameras to deliver greater features and functionality at a lower cost than ever before. These factors...

The term fluorescence is often applied as a synonym for photoluminescence, although luminescence actually covers fluorescence and phosphorescence. Both of these terms describe the process of...

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...

With the understanding of aspheric lens manufacturing provided in part one of this article, designers have the tools to optimize their aspheres; the next step is to understand how to specify and...

Aspheric surfaces are powerful tools that combine the optical corrections of multiple lenses into a single element (Figure 1) and affect performance in ways that spherical optics cannot. For example,...

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...

Laser development for the microscopy market continues to be driven by key trends in applications, which currently include superresolution techniques, multiphoton applications in optogenetics and...

Surface quality has become one of the most poorly understood specifications in the optics industry. A significant portion of the confusion stems from the two major competing (and largely...

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...

Double-sided processing is a batch-type process that uses planetary action — generally with loose, abrasive particles suspended in a liquid vehicle — to abrade material almost equally...

Any number of medical, industrial, and analytical applications requires the detection of light. Chemiluminescence, bioluminescence, fluorescence, and atomic absorption are just a few, and all require...

An interferometer is an instrument that compares the position or surface structure of two objects. The basic two-beam division of amplitude interferometer components consists of a light source, a...

Charged-injection device imagers are metal-oxide semiconductor (MOS) detectors that can be fabricated using PMOS, NMOS and CMOS integrated circuit technology, and may be configured as a...

The digital camera represents an integration of optics, mechanics and electronics consisting of three layers (Figures 1a, b and c). The top and the middle layers are printed circuit boards (PCBs),...

Applications facilitated by tunable lasers fall into two categories: situations in which one or more discrete wavelengths are not available from any single- or multiline fixed-wavelength laser, or...

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...

Images are produced by many means: cameras, x-ray machines, electron microscopes, radar and ultrasound. They are used in the entertainment, medical, scientific and business industries; for security...

There is a growing market for imaging systems that provides an immediate, slow-motion view of a process that allows one to see events that happen too quickly for the human eye to perceive or...

Hyperspectral imaging spectroscopy has developed dramatically from a large, complex, remote-sensing satellite- or aircraft-based system into a rugged, compact, economically priced imaging and...

Since their invention in the late 1960s, charge-coupled devices, also called CCDs, have found widespread use in imaging applications. Electronic cameras based on CCD technology are used in...

If we were to estimate the output of a CCD or thermal camera, we would typically draw an image over the detectors, aligning the image with the detector axes. We show it this way because it’s...

Just as an electronic connector provides a pluggable connection between electronic circuits, a fiber optic connector provides an optical one. The goal is joining a fiber to a transmitter, receiver or...

An optical coating engineer is frequently confronted with a difficult specification for a coating. Often the difficulty in the specification results from the particular form of the optical system. If...

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...

Ultraprecision machining can be defined in general terms as the removal of material from a substrate utilizing a machine tool that operates at a resolution of 10 nm (0.4 μin.) or less. The...

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. ...

Photonic components are key elements for the information technology (IT). Photonics technology covers the generation of information (cameras, sensors), its transportation (optical communication),...

Illumination design has developed rapidly to include not only automotive headlamps and street lamps, but also backlit displays, fluorescent panel lighting, light-emitting diode or laser sources, and...

The market for flat panel displays (FPDs) has undergone tremendous growth, driven mostly by increased demand for televisions, cell phones, computers, digital cameras and MP3 players. Similarly,...

Like other CTDs, the CID imager uses hundreds of thousands (up to 4 million) pixel elements to capture optical images, and converts the light into an electronic charge which may be displayed on a...

Some efforts in global optimization research for optical design center around probabilistic methods such as global search. While promising for small problems with few variables, these methods...

For any discussion of laser beam diagnostics, it is first necessary to define some terms that characterize beam properties. Broad definitions can include measurements of laser energy or power,...

Particle image velocimetry (PIV) is an experimental tool in fluid mechanics and aerodynamics. The basic principle involves photographic recording of the motion of microscopic particles that follow...

The use and importance of colorimetry has grown in unison with the increase of global manufacturing and processing. When plastic automotive trim produced on one continent must match a painted metal...

Imaging has long been used in industrial processes to measure, monitor, control, or otherwise manage the production of goods. The challenge to the process designer is to develop a tool that captures...

To Isaac Newton the problem was clear, and in 1704 he realized the effects of atmospheric turbulence on image formation. Just as heat waves shimmering above a hot patch of ground can distort our...