Visible light is central to our existence as living beings, not only as a means for sensing our environment but as the dominant input of energy for photosynthesis at the base of the food chain. Thus understanding of optical phenomena and the processes by which light may be manipulated are active areas of both research and technological advancement. What are, in fact, useful sources of light and how do we characterize them? Considering light as a wave of electromagnetic energy, what are the manifestations of this wavelike character and how are they used? How do we reconcile this underlying nature of light with the everyday sense of light traveling in straight lines and following ray paths? How does light behave when it passes through materials? Answering this reveals a particle-like nature of light that we must reconcile with the wave theories that seemed so useful. The particle-like interaction of light with materials gives us important methods of detection, while the wavelike interaction including the phenomenon of refraction results in many useful elements, like lenses and prisms. How do we precisely measure the performance of these components for purposes of imaging and light concentration or deflection? How has the ability to inject light into transparent fibers and guide the light over long distances become so fruitful for communication and sensing technologies? What makes lasers work and how does the idea of coherence become so clearly evident in forming confined beams and enabling delicate measurements in space and time? What is the nature of light and its interactions with matter at the atomic scale when the light is reduced to extremely short bursts of just a few cycles?
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Laser safety
(This section is still being developed.)
Collimators
Optical rails and guides
Optical tables
Lasers
Light sources
Microscopes
Refractometers
Telescopes
.S01 Diffraction
.S02 Interferometry
.S03 Optical Fourier transforms and spatial filtering
.S04 Lens testing and characterization with modulation transfer function
.S05 Fiber optics: single mode and multi-mode, including Hamiltonian analog
.S06 Gas laser construction and mode structure
.S07 Ellipsometry and characterization of optical thin films
Note: this list overlaps a lot with technical competencies for practical optics work. The perspective here is to gain understanding about and do further research with fundamental optical phenomena.
Light sources
Incandescent
Discharge / plasma
LEDs
Luminescence
Solid luminescence
Chemiluminescence
Bioluminescence
Phosphorescence
(See also lasers below)
Light detectors
Photoconductors
Photovoltaic cells
Photoelectric cells / photomultipliers
Avalanche photodiodes
Light measurement
Radiometry
Photometry and vision
Integrating spheres
Refraction
Birefringence
Fresnel coefficients for reflection and transmission
Processes of light absorption in materials
Fundamental lens optics
Aspheric lenses
Lens making
Lens testing
Fundamental mirror optics
Mirror making
Mirror testing
Fourier optics
Modulation transfer function
Gaussian beam optics
Hamiltonian optics
Optical system alignment
Adaptive optics
Optical phase conjugation
Camera optics
Multi-element lens design
Zoom lens design
Non-imaging optics
Diffraction
Single-slit
Multi-slit
Circular aperture
Diffraction gratings
Scattering
Rayleigh scattering
Mie scattering
Statistical optics
Hanbury Brown Twiss
Photon correlation
Particle size measurement
Atmospheric optics
Vision
Color and colorimetry
Polarizers
Faraday rotation
Microscope optics
Essential optical system
Objective design
Illumination system
Koehler
Epifluorescent
Polarization
Phase contrast
Telescope optics
Refracting
Reflecting
Colllimators
Binoculars
Interferometers - path division
Michelson
Twyman-Green
Mach-Zender
Ring gyros
Interferometers - cavity / amplitude division
Plane Fabry-Perot
Spherical Fabry-Perot
Lummer-Gehrcke
Holography
Speckle
Optical coherence
Optical metrology
Moire fringes
Laser scanning
(see interferometers above)
Thin film optics
Ellipsometry
Dielectric coatings
Mirrors
Filters
Liquid crystal optics
Integrated optics
Fiber optics
Single mode
Multi-mode
Fiber optic coupling
Fiber-Bragg grating
Photonic crystals
Evanescent waves and their uses
Surface plasmon resonance
Kerr cell
Pockets cell
Acoustic-optic modulator
Spatial light modulators
Micro-mirror arrays
Laser design, use and testing
Gas / gas ion laser
Helium-Neon
Argon-Ion / Krypton-Ion
Nitrogen
CO2
Diode laser
Built-in cavity
External cavity
Tunable
Solid state laser
Fiber laser
Excimer laser
Dye laser
Nonlinear optics
Frequency doubler
Parametric amplifier
Fast and ultra-fast lasers
Pulsed nitrogen laser
Femtosecond laers
Laser interaction with materials
Laser vaporization
Laser ablation
American Physical Society organizational units
Open problems
PIRA bibliography
Physicslabrefs bibliography
ALPhA Immersions
Precision Interferometry
AC Faraday Effect (second AC Faraday Rotation)
Five Modern Physics Experiments (interference and diffraction)
Labs at other universities and colleges
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