Questions tagged [optics]
Optics is the study of light, and its interaction with matter. It includes topics such as imaging systems, fiber optics, lasers, quantum optics, and more.
8,130 questions
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Is this additive mixing or camera image sensor error?
I have coupled RGB laser light into 3 gratings on chip and projected the light into the the farfield and put a camera sensor on top of the beam. Here is the setup and the experiment.
What I observed ...
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Research stuck at TRL-3 [closed]
In collaboration with a university in the UK I had done research on light detection by electronic photosensors. But the project is stuck at TRL-3 and we are not able to move forward.
Can someone ...
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What do you call the greatest common divisor of each frequencies of interfering waves?
For simplicity, let there be two nice waves in the form Acos(wt) +Bsin(wt) interfering in a 2-D plane. From my understanding, a wave is considered to have finished one cycle when it goes back to its ...
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Why can't we see blue gas moving in the sky? (instead, we see uniform and stable color)
We all know that the sky is blue due to Rayleigh scattering. And also we know that the smoke from a cigarette looks blue(ish) due to this phenomenon. So, why do we see "uniform" and "...
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Understanding Caustic in Optics
I’m looking for a clear and accessible optics textbook that explains caustics in optical systems from the ground up. Can someone help me with that?
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What does a rainbow look like in Saturn due to the rain of diamonds?
Research tells that there could be diamond hail rain in Saturn due to black cloud of soot. So is there any possibility that you could see a rainbow from there? Well, the black cloud of soot and ...
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Blazed transmission grating
I'm having trouble figuring out why the max intensity envelop (i.e. single slit intensity peak) would be separated from zero order of the grating, for a blazed transmission grating.
In the left ...
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Why am I getting Intensity of light depends on its color? (considering wave nature) [closed]
In my physics lecture I was told that intensity of light is directly proportional to (amplitude)^2 * (frequency)^2
Now I have a question about it; if intensity depends on frequency squared, shouldn’t ...
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Relationship between Radius of Curvature and focal length of a spherical mirror without approximation [duplicate]
I have seen tons of videos on the matter but all of them prove $R=2f$ which requires an approximation. I have known and used a result $f=R/2(1-sec(θ))$ but am unable to prove it.
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Beam Splitter on Coherent States (Schrodinger vs Heisenberg Picture)
Consider the 50/50 beam splitter acting on input modes $a_{\text{in}},b_{\text{in}}$:
\begin{equation}
\begin{bmatrix}
a_{\text{out}}\\
b_{\text{out}}
\end{bmatrix}
=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}
\begin{bmatrix}
...
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Causes of reddish halo in the clouds around the moon
While walking in the evening, I have noticed strange reddish halo in the clouds around moon :
What are root causes of this phenomena?
I suppose it's not the same effect when we see reddish sky at the ...
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Rotation of electric field vector or polarization
Given a circularly polarized light field. I am using complex notation to represent the field,
$$\vec{E}(z=0, t) = \frac{1}{\sqrt2} [ \hat{x} (\cos(\omega t) - i \sin(\omega t)) + \hat{y} (i\cos(\omega ...
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Fourier Optics Relation with Signal Processing Pulse
In signal processing, a very short pulse in the time domain can be understood as a superposition of many frequency components in the frequency domain.
In imaging or Fourier optics, can we find an ...
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Interference of waves in YDSE
I am new to YDSE (Young's Double Slit Experiment) so kindly bear with me if my question is simple.
My professor said that for interference to occur, the two sources must have the same frequency - only ...
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How is this kind of rainbow formed?
Earlier, I saw this rainbow out of my window:
Sorry for the meagre quality. As you can see, there is a primary rainbow, but directly attached below the primary rainbow, another, fainter and thinner ...