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...

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...

As recently as five years ago, shopping for a microscope light source was fairly straightforward. For routine applications, it was tungsten halogen, typically 100 W, while for fluorescence, it was an...

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...

For rotationally symmetric optical systems, either the lens or the detector moves along the optical axis to maintain optical performance. If the compensating axial motion is accomplished without the...

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...

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...

Infrared system design is not, like some circuit design, a synthetic process. One cannot start by stating the problem and proceeding in an orderly fashion to a final solution. Rather, we guess a...

Reflected-ultraviolet imaging is a rather mysterious area of the imaging field. There is relatively little actual UV imagery to be found on the Internet or in the literature compared to near-infrared...

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...

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...