Provides optical designers, shop managers, opticians, and purchasers a concise reference explaining what the designer needs to know before making final choices and how to specify the components before they are ordered. It presents how conventional fabrication proceeds for representative components, alternative and emerging methods to optical fabrication, product evaluation, and the calculations used.

This handbook explains principles, processes, methods, and procedures of optical engineering in a concise and practical way. It emphasizes fundamental approaches and provides useful formulas and step-by-step worked-out examples to demonstrate applications and clarify calculation methods. The book covers refractive, reflective, and diffractive optical components; lens optical devices; modern fringe pattern analysis; optical metrology; Fourier optics and optical image processing; electro-optical and acousto-optical devices; spatial and spectral filters; optical fibers and accessories; optical fabrication; and more. It includes over 2,000 tables, flow charts, graphs, schematics, drawings, photographs, and mathematical expressions.

Covers the fundamental science of grinding and polishing by examining the chemical and mechanical interactions over many scale lengths Manufacturing next generation optics has been, and will continue to be, enablers for enhancing the performance of advanced laser, imaging, and spectroscopy systems. This book reexamines the age-old field of optical fabrication from a materials-science perspective, specifically the multiple, complex interactions between the workpiece (optic), slurry, and lap. It also describes novel characterization and fabrication techniques to improve and better understand the optical fabrication process, ultimately leading to higher quality optics with higher yield. Materials Science and Technology of Optical Fabrication is divided into two major parts. The first part describes the phenomena and corresponding process parameters affecting both the grinding and polishing processes during optical fabrication. It then relates them to the critical resulting properties of the optic (surface quality, surface figure, surface roughness, and material removal rate). The second part of the book covers a number of related topics including: developed forensic tools used to increase yield of optics with respect to surface quality (scratch/dig) and fracture loss; novel characterization and fabrication techniques used to understand/quantify the fundamental phenomena described in the first part of the book; novel and recent optical fabrication processes and their connection with the fundamental interactions; and finally, special techniques utilized to fabricate optics with high damage resistance. Focuses on the fundamentals of grinding and polishing, from a materials science viewpoint, by studying the chemical and mechanical interactions/phenomena over many scale lengths between the workpiece, slurry, and lap Explains how these phenomena affect the major characteristics of the optic workpiece—namely surface figure, surface quality, surface roughness, and material removal rate Describes methods to improve the major characteristics of the workpiece as well as improve process yield, such as through fractography and scratch forensics Covers novel characterization and fabrication techniques used to understand and quantify the fundamental phenomena of various aspects of the workpiece or fabrication process Details novel and recent optical fabrication processes and their connection with the fundamental interactions Materials Science and Technology of Optical Fabrication is an excellent guidebook for process engineers, fabrication engineers, manufacturing engineers, optical scientists, and opticians in the optical fabrication industry. It will also be helpful for students studying material science and applied optics/photonics.

Optical components are essential key elements in modern engineering and everyday life. The education of skilled personnel and specialists in the fields of theoretical and practical optics manufacturing is of essential importance for next-generation technologies. Against this background, this book provides the basis for the education and advanced training of precision and ophthalmic optics technicians, craftsmen, and foremen, and it is an extensive reference work for students, academics, optical designers or shop managers, and production engineers. It not only covers particularly used and applied machines, working materials, testing procedures, and machining steps for classical optics manufacturing, but it also addresses the production and specification of optical glasses as well as unconventional production techniques and novel approaches. Optics Manufacturing: Components and Systems furthermore covers the basics of light propagation and provides an overview on optical materials and components; presents an introduction and explanation of the necessary considerations and procedures for the initial definition of manufacturing tolerances and the relevant industrial standards for optics manufacturing; and addresses the production of micro optics, the assembly of opto-mechanical setups and possible manufacturing errors, and the impact of the resulting inaccuracies. In order to allow fast and clear access to the most essential information, each chapter ends with a short summary of the most important aspects, including an explanation of relevant equations, symbols, and abbreviations. For further reading, extensive lists of references are also provided. Finally, exercises on the covered basic principles of optics, approaches, and techniques of optics manufacturing—including their corresponding detailed solutions—are found in the appendix.

Traditional macro-optics can be designed without complex design software tools. However, digital optics, especially wafer-scale micro-optics, require specific software and tools. There is often no analytical solution, and thus complex iterative optimization algorithms may be required. This book covers refractive and diffractive micro-optics, the iterative optimization process, and modeling and fabrication techniques crucial to this field. The ability to create hybrid systems capable of producing analog and digital functionality is also addressed.

"Today's SWIR, MWIR, LWIR and multispectral technologies cover a wide range of commercial and military applications and continue to rapidly expand in almost every aspect of our lives. This Field Guide focuses on the most common infrared crystals and glasses used in these systems, from their manufacturing methods through modern optical fabrication technologies to the end-use applications. Detailed optical, crystallographic, mechanical, chemical, and thermal properties of the most popular infrared materials are reviewed in detail along with process flows and relative comparisons. The Field Guide to Infrared Optical Materials provides a concise and convenient resource for those interested in the materials used in infrared optical systems"--