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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

An optical time-domain reflectometer sends short pulses of light into a fiber and measures its reflections as a function of time. The delay of these reflections to the detector as well as their...

Optical coatings are deposited as thin-film multilayers of a variety of materials using specific deposition techniques. Coatings are applied to optical components that are intended for use at...

Photonics 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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

The applications where rapid detection of light is a must are many. They include a wide variety: semiconductor inspection, gene sequencing, oil well logging and high-energy physics. The reasons for...

NSOM is suitable for studies on the mesoscopic scale (several tens to hundreds of molecular dimensions). It has become an important tool in research and applications of semiconductors, organic layers...

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...

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...