Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
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.
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.
where R is the radius of curvature of the optical surface. The sag S ( r ) is the displacement along the optic axis of the surface from the vertex, at distance r {\displaystyle r} from the axis. A good explanation of both this approximate formula and the exact formula can be found here .
For optics like convex lenses, the converging point of the light exiting the lens is on the input side of the focal plane, and is positive in optical power. 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.
Image distance in a spherical mirror + = () Subscripts 1 and 2 refer to initial and final optical media respectively. These ratios are sometimes also used, following simply from other definitions of refractive index, wave phase velocity, and the luminal speed equation:
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.