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Superprism
A superprism is a photonic crystal in which an entering beam of light will lead to an extremely large angular dispersion. The ability of the photonic crystal to send optical beams with different wavelengths to considerably different angles in space in superprisms has been used to demonstrate wavelength demultiplexing in these structures. The first superprism also modified group velocity rather than phase velocity in order to achieve the "superprism phenomena". This effect was interpreted as anisotropic dispersion in contrast to an isotropic dispersion. Furthermore, the two beams of light appear to show negative bending within the crystal. See also Mirror Pack* Superlens * Prism (optics) * Metamaterial * Perfect mirror A perfect mirror is a mirror that reflects light (and electromagnetic radiation in general) perfectly, and does not transmit or absorb it. General Domestic mirrors are not perfect mirrors as they absorb a significant portion of the light which fal ... Reference ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Photonic Crystal
A photonic crystal is an optical nanostructure in which the refractive index changes periodically. This affects the propagation of light in the same way that the structure of Crystal structure, natural crystals gives rise to X-ray crystallography, X-ray diffraction and that the atomic lattices (crystal structure) of semiconductors affect their conductivity of electrons. Photonic crystals occur in nature in the form of structural coloration and animal reflectors, and, as artificially produced, promise to be useful in a range of applications. Photonic crystals can be fabricated for one, two, or three dimensions. One-dimensional photonic crystals can be made of thin film layers deposited on each other. Two-dimensional ones can be made by photolithography, or by drilling holes in a suitable substrate. Fabrication methods for three-dimensional ones include drilling under different angles, stacking multiple 2-D layers on top of each other, direct laser writing, or, for example, instig ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prism (optics)
An optical prism is a transparent optics, optical element with flat, polished surfaces that are designed to refraction, refract light. At least one surface must be angled — elements with two parallel surfaces are ''not'' prisms. The most familiar type of optical prism is the triangular prism, which has a triangular base and rectangular sides. Not all optical prisms are prism (geometry), geometric prisms, and not all geometric prisms would count as an optical prism. Prisms can be made from any material that is transparent to the wavelengths for which they are designed. Typical materials include glass, acrylic glass, acrylic and fluorite#Optics, fluorite. A dispersive prism can be used to break white#White light, white light up into its constituent spectral colors (the colors of the rainbow) as described in the following section. Other types of prisms noted below can be used to reflection (physics), reflect light, or to split light into components with different polarization (w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Perfect Mirror
A perfect mirror is a mirror that reflects light (and electromagnetic radiation in general) perfectly, and does not transmit or absorb it. General Domestic mirrors are not perfect mirrors as they absorb a significant portion of the light which falls on them. Dielectric mirrors are glass or other substrates on which one or more layers of dielectric material are deposited, to form an optical coating. A very complex dielectric mirror can reflect up to 99.999% of the light incident upon it, for a narrow range of wavelengths and angles. A simpler mirror may reflect 99.9% of the light, but may cover a broader range of wavelengths. Almost any dielectric material can act as a perfect mirror through total internal reflection. This effect only occurs at shallow angles, however, and only for light inside the material. The effect happens when light goes from a medium with a higher index of refraction to one with a lower value (like air). A new type of dielectric "perfect mirror" was develope ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dispersion (optics)
In optics, and by analogy other branches of physics dealing with wave propagation, dispersion is the phenomenon in which the phase velocity of a wave depends on its frequency; sometimes the term chromatic dispersion is used for specificity to optics in particular. A medium having this common property may be termed a dispersive medium (plural ''dispersive media''). Although the term is used in the field of optics to describe light and other electromagnetic waves, dispersion in the same sense can apply to any sort of wave motion such as acoustic dispersion in the case of sound and seismic waves, and in gravity waves (ocean waves). Within optics, dispersion is a property of telecommunication signals along transmission lines (such as microwaves in coaxial cable) or the pulses of light in optical fiber. Physically, dispersion translates in a loss of kinetic energy through absorption. In optics, one important and familiar consequence of dispersion is the change in the angle of refra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Multiplexing
In telecommunications and computer networking, multiplexing (sometimes contracted to muxing) is a method by which multiple analog or digital signals are combined into one signal over a shared medium. The aim is to share a scarce resource - a physical transmission medium. For example, in telecommunications, several telephone calls may be carried using one wire. Multiplexing originated in telegraphy in the 1870s, and is now widely applied in communications. In telephony, George Owen Squier is credited with the development of telephone carrier multiplexing in 1910. The multiplexed signal is transmitted over a communication channel such as a cable. The multiplexing divides the capacity of the communication channel into several logical channels, one for each message signal or data stream to be transferred. A reverse process, known as demultiplexing, extracts the original channels on the receiver end. A device that performs the multiplexing is called a multiplexer (MUX), and a dev ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Group Velocity
The group velocity of a wave is the velocity with which the overall envelope shape of the wave's amplitudes—known as the ''modulation'' or ''envelope'' of the wave—propagates through space. For example, if a stone is thrown into the middle of a very still pond, a circular pattern of waves with a quiescent center appears in the water, also known as a capillary wave. The expanding ring of waves is the wave group, within which one can discern individual waves that travel faster than the group as a whole. The amplitudes of the individual waves grow as they emerge from the trailing edge of the group and diminish as they approach the leading edge of the group. Definition and interpretation Definition The group velocity is defined by the equation: :v_ \ \equiv\ \frac\, where is the wave's angular frequency (usually expressed in radians per second), and is the angular wavenumber (usually expressed in radians per meter). The phase velocity is: . The function , which gi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phase Velocity
The phase velocity of a wave is the rate at which the wave propagates in any medium. This is the velocity at which the phase of any one frequency component of the wave travels. For such a component, any given phase of the wave (for example, the crest) will appear to travel at the phase velocity. The phase velocity is given in terms of the wavelength (lambda) and time period as :v_\mathrm = \frac. Equivalently, in terms of the wave's angular frequency , which specifies angular change per unit of time, and wavenumber (or angular wave number) , which represent the angular change per unit of space, :v_\mathrm = \frac. To gain some basic intuition for this equation, we consider a propagating (cosine) wave . We want to see how fast a particular phase of the wave travels. For example, we can choose , the phase of the first crest. This implies , and so . Formally, we let the phase and see immediately that and . So, it immediately follows that : \frac = -\frac \frac = \frac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anisotropic
Anisotropy () is the property of a material which allows it to change or assume different properties in different directions, as opposed to isotropy. It can be defined as a difference, when measured along different axes, in a material's physical or mechanical properties (absorbance, refractive index, conductivity, tensile strength, etc.). An example of anisotropy is light coming through a polarizer. Another is wood, which is easier to split along its grain than across it. Fields of interest Computer graphics In the field of computer graphics, an anisotropic surface changes in appearance as it rotates about its geometric normal, as is the case with velvet. Anisotropic filtering (AF) is a method of enhancing the image quality of textures on surfaces that are far away and steeply angled with respect to the point of view. Older techniques, such as bilinear and trilinear filtering, do not take into account the angle a surface is viewed from, which can result in aliasing or bl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Superlens
A superlens, or super lens, is a lens (optics), lens which uses metamaterials to go beyond the diffraction limit. For example, in 1995, Guerra combined a transparent grating having 50nm lines and spaces (the "metamaterial") with a conventional microscope immersion objective. The resulting "superlens" resolved a silicon sample also having 50nm lines and spaces, far beyond the classical diffraction limit imposed by the illumination having 650nm wavelength in air. The diffraction limit is a feature of conventional lenses and optical microscopy, microscopes that limits the fineness of their resolution depending on the illumination wavelength and the numerical aperture NA of the objective lens. Many lens designs have been proposed that go beyond the diffraction limit in some way, but constraints and obstacles face each of them. History In 1873 Ernst Abbe reported that conventional lenses are incapable of capturing some fine details of any given image. The super lens is intended to cap ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Metamaterial
A metamaterial (from the Greek word μετά ''meta'', meaning "beyond" or "after", and the Latin word ''materia'', meaning "matter" or "material") is any material engineered to have a property that is not found in naturally occurring materials. They are made from assemblies of multiple elements fashioned from composite materials such as metals and plastics. The materials are usually arranged in repeating patterns, at scales that are smaller than the wavelengths of the phenomena they influence. Metamaterials derive their properties not from the properties of the base materials, but from their newly designed structures. Their precise shape, geometry, size, orientation and arrangement gives them their smart properties capable of manipulating electromagnetic waves: by blocking, absorbing, enhancing, or bending waves, to achieve benefits that go beyond what is possible with conventional materials. Appropriately designed metamaterials can affect waves of electromagnetic radiation or ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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