FUNDAMENTALS o f PHOTONICS

Objectives

When you finish this module you will be able to:

• Distinguish between light rays and light waves.
• State the law of reflection and show with appropriate drawings how it applies to light rays at plane and spherical surfaces.
• State Snell’s law of refraction and show with appropriate drawings how it applies to light rays at plane and spherical surfaces.
• Define index of refraction and give typical values for glass, water, and air.
• Calculate the critical angle of incidence for the interface between two optical media and describe the process of total internal reflection.
• Describe how total internal reflection can be used to redirect light in prisms and trap light in fibers.
• Describe dispersion of light and show how a prism disperses white light.
• Calculate the minimum angle of deviation for a prism and show how this angle can be used to determine the refractive index of a prism material.
• Describe what is meant by Gaussian or paraxial optics.
• Describe the relationship between collimated light and the focal points of convex and concave mirrors.
• Use ray-tracing techniques to locate the images formed by plane and spherical mirrors.
• Use the mirror equations to determine location, size, orientation, and nature of images formed with spherical mirrors.
• Distinguish between a thin lens and a thick lens.
• Describe the shapes of three typical converging (positive) thin lenses and three typical diverging (negative) thin lenses.
• Describe the f-number and numerical aperture for a lens and explain how they control image brightness.
• Use ray-tracing techniques to locate images formed by thin lenses.
• Describe the relationship between collimated light and the focal points of a thin lens.
• Use the lensmaker’s equation to determine the focal length of a thin lens.
• Use the thin-lens equations to determine location, size, orientation, and nature of the images formed by simple lenses.