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Photonics Handbook
Optics
Diffraction Gratings: Selection Guidelines
Diffraction gratings are optical components with a periodic structure that separate light into beams traveling in predictable directions based on their wavelength. The grating acts as the dispersive element at the heart of many modern spectroscopic...
What Is Photonics?
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 health care have helped shape the 20th century, and...
Optical System Optimization: Analyzing the Effects of Stray Light
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 systems. Most optical engineers, on the other...
Measuring Aspheres: Selecting the Best Technique
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 also allow the same or better performance using fewer...
Aspheric Lenses: Optimizing the Design
This second of two articles discusses the tools optical designers need to tailor their designs to the appropriate manufacturing process, optimizing the cost of component fabrication.
Flat Optics: Considerations When Buying
To simplify the process when purchasing flat optics, we will discuss the top six factors from a manufacturer’s perspective, all of which affect the three major areas of the purchasing decision: quality, delivery, and cost. Flat optics generally...
Aspheric Lenses: Design Considerations
This first of two articles will cover design and manufacturing options for aspheres; the second will include more detail on manufacturing and testing processes. These articles will provide the tools optics designers need to tailor their designs to...
Optical Design Software: Fundamentals and Potential
Enhanced interface usability in modern design software enables even inexperienced lens designers to build well-performing optical systems. Optical design software allows the user to develop a configuration of optical elements that manipulate the...
Understanding Surface Quality: A Practical Guide
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 incompatible) standards, Mil-PRF-13830B, and ISO 10110. Both...
Excimer Optics: High Power Demands High Reliability
The first high-reflectance mirror coatings for the UV and vacuum UV (VUV) were of the Al + MgF2 type produced in the late 1950s. Coatings of this design are still used today for multigas cavity mirrors and many other applications because they are...
Optical Materials: Double-Sided Lapping and Polishing
Double-sided lapping and polishing utilizes planetary action with the combination of a top and bottom plate to precisely grind and polish precision, parallel optics. Double-sided processing is a batch-type process that uses planetary action –...
Passive Athermalization: Maintaining Optical Performance Over Temperature
An optical system is athermalized if its critical performance parameters (such as modulation transfer function, back focal length and effective focal length, etc.) do not change appreciably over the operating temperature range. For rotationally...
Plastic Optics: Specifying Injection-Molded Polymer Optics
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 as an important enabling technology allowing the...
Thin-Film Coatings: A Buyers' Guide
What are thin-film coatings? Optical thin-film coatings modify the transmittance and reflectance properties of the substrate material to which they are applied. This article provides an objective overview of typical performance characteristics,...
Ultraviolet Filters: Past and Present
Bandpass filters are passive optical devices that control the flow of light. They are used to isolate certain wavelengths or colors. Applications range from detecting the gaseous composition of a distant star to visualizing the chemical
Optical Delay Lines: Key to Time-Resolved Measurements
To obtain an accurate means of creating reliable delays in any time-resolved spectroscopy or dynamic experiment, several factors about the delay line stage must be considered to reduce or eliminate errors associated with linear stages. One of the...
Acousto-Optic Devices
Charts showing the characteristics of acousto-optic scanning devices, acousto-optic figures of merit, and solutions for common problems with acousto-optic processor devices.
Beryllium Mirrors: Refinements Enable New Applications
Beryllium mirrors are finding commercial applications, while maintaining their military and space applications. Refinements in design and improvements in manufacturing technology have cut costs and new coatings have enabled high-power applications...
Camera Resolution: Combining Detector and Optics Performance
Most image-quality discussions center on resolution, which is thought to uniquely determine system performance. Resolution, however, is a more complex concept. Camera resolution depends upon the optical blur diameter and the detector size. Schade...
Cleaning Optics: Choosing the Best Method
Cleaning optical elements improves performance, providing proper materials, techniques and handling procedures are used to minimize the risk of damage.
Common Lens Formulas
Formulas for lens focal length, magnification, relative aperture (f/#), object-to-image distance, object-to-lens distance, lens-to-image distance and numerical aperture.
Component Choices: Avoiding Tolerancing Mistakes
Designing an optical system involves more than simply understanding the theory behind optics. To design a system efficiently and economically, it is important to understand the capabilities of an optical shop and the interaction of the...
Diamond Machining: Ultraprecision Machine Technology
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 machining process may take the form of single-point...
Digital Still Cameras: The Changing Face of Imaging
The digital camera reflects a sea change in the compact camera market. While the 20th was the century of film cameras, the 21st belongs to the digital camera. The digital camera re...
Filters: Glossary, Equations, Parameters
The following is a list of terms commonly used to describe the spectral characteristics of filters. Attentuation Region (or Blocking) The spectral region over which very low transmission is required. Attenuation requirements are generally specified...
Gaussian and Newtonian Thin Lens Formulas
Four important equations from which the image distance and the lateral magnification can be computed for an object at any arbitrary distance from a thin lens.Equation (1) is known as the Gaussian form of the lens equation, after the mathematician...
Illumination Design and Analysis Software: A Vital Tool in the Designer’s Kit
Optical systems design and analysis software is a key element in an optical engineer’s toolkit. Simulation allows virtual tinkering with a system problem before ever creating — and in some cases eliminating — a prototype. The results can be analyzed...
Lens Aberrations: Avoiding Defects in Imagery
A perfect lens can produce a perfect image. But seven primary lens aberrations can blur or distort the image instead, and they should be considered when creating an optical system. A lens collects light from a point on an object and focuses it to a...
Optical System Design: Keeping the Coatings in Mind
The design of optical systems should balance the coating constraints with the optical and mechanical requirements. Understanding the key properties and limitations of optical coatings enables the system designer to improve the performance of the...
Pressurization
Rules of Thumb
Scientists and engineers tend to want to answer simple relational questions with a blackboard covered with equations, even when questioners just want a rough estimate to gauge whether a change would cause more problems than it would fix...
Nano-Optics Technology: Optical Alchemy
Transforming ordinary materials into extraordinary optics holds the key to progress. 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...
Nano-Optics: New Rules for Optical Components
Operating in the nano-realm offers designers a host of new opportunities. Understanding what to expect in this miniature world is key to successful nano-optic component design. When physical structures get very small — on the order of...
Polygonal Laser Scanners: Fitting the Elements to the Task
Polygonal laser scanning is the technology of choice in a variety of applications. It can be used to write information as in laser marking and printing, direct-to-plate imaging, film recording and laser projection; or as a reader for bar code...
Beamsplitters: A Guide for Designers
With the large variety of beamsplitters available, the designer needs to take many factors into consideration. This article and its illustrations will go a long way toward making the correct choice less of a risk. All curves show typical...
Global Optimization: A Tool for Successful Design
Optical Research Associates’ Global Synthesis (GS) algorithm has been in use for more than ten years. During that time, the algorithm has been applied to numerous types of problems, and has proved remarkably successful with an approach that is...
Optical Objective Systems: A Schematic Guide
Simple Meniscus Lens The simple meniscus lens is almost universally used in inexpensive cameras. To get an image of good quality it must be used with a separate aperture stop, reducing the aperture of the lens and the aberrations and their effects....
Optical Components: Finding Your Way Through the Maze
Optical components fall into two basic groups: transmissives and reflectives. Transmissives include lenses, filters, windows, optical flats, prisms, polarizers, beamsplitters, wave plates, and fiber optics; reflectives include mirrors and...
Adaptive Optics: Taming Atmospheric Turbulence
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 view, the image of a distant object formed by a...

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