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Radius of curvature sign convention for optical design. Radius of curvature (ROC) has specific meaning and sign convention in optical design. A spherical lens or mirror surface has a center of curvature located either along or decentered from the system local optical axis. The vertex of the lens surface is located on the local optical axis.
For a spherically-curved mirror in air, the magnitude of the focal length is equal to the radius of curvature of the mirror divided by two. The focal length is positive for a concave mirror, and negative for a convex mirror. In the sign convention used in optical design, a concave mirror has negative radius of curvature, so
Convex mirror lets motorists see around a corner. Detail of the convex mirror in the Arnolfini Portrait. The passenger-side mirror on a car is typically a convex mirror. In some countries, these are labeled with the safety warning "Objects in mirror are closer than they appear", to warn the driver of the convex mirror's distorting effects on distance perception.
Types of two-mirror optical cavities, with mirrors of various curvatures, showing the radiation pattern inside each cavity. Light confined in a resonator will reflect multiple times from the mirrors, and due to the effects of interference, only certain patterns and frequencies of radiation will be sustained by the resonator, with the others being suppressed by destructive interference.
A diagram representing a convex mirror, which shows its focus, focal length, center of curvature, and the principal axis. It enables the viewer to visualize how the mirror looks and functions. It shows where the mirror reflects the light falling on it, and from where the light could come to be reflected.
For concave lenses, the focal point is on the back side of the lens, or the output side of the focal plane, and is negative in power. A lens with no optical power is called an optical window, having flat, parallel faces. The optical power directly relates to how large positive images will be magnified, and how small negative images will be ...
Examples of real images include the image produced on a detector in the rear of a camera, and the image produced on an eyeball retina (the camera and eye focus light through an internal convex lens). In ray diagrams (such as the images on the right), real rays of light are always represented by full, solid lines; perceived or extrapolated rays ...
Each optical element (surface, interface, mirror, or beam travel) is described by a 2 × 2 ray transfer matrix which operates on a vector describing an incoming light ray to calculate the outgoing ray. Multiplication of the successive matrices thus yields a concise ray transfer matrix describing the entire optical system.