Optics Articles

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...

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...

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...

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...

A lens collects light from a point on an object and focuses it to a corresponding conjugate point on an image. Under most conditions, the lens fails at this task because of some error in the...