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The principal ray or chief ray (sometimes known as the b ray) in an optical system is the meridional ray that starts at an edge of an object and passes through the center of the aperture stop. [5] [8] [7] The distance between the chief ray (or an extension of it for a virtual image) and the optical axis at an image location defines the size of ...
Geometrical optics does not account for certain optical effects such as diffraction and interference, which are considered in physical optics. This simplification is useful in practice; it is an excellent approximation when the wavelength is small compared to the size of structures with which the light interacts.
In geometrical optics, for each object ray entering an optical system, a single and unique image ray exits from the system. In mathematical terms, the optical system performs a transformation that maps every object ray to an image ray. [1] The object ray and its associated image ray are said to be conjugate to each other. This term also applies ...
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:
In physics, physical optics, or wave optics, is the branch of optics that studies interference, diffraction, polarization, and other phenomena for which the ray approximation of geometric optics is not valid. This usage tends not to include effects such as quantum noise in optical communication, which is studied in the sub-branch of coherence ...
Optics is a broad subject area. Much of the content is covered in subcategories. Many basic concepts are covered in Category:Geometrical optics, in which light is considered as if it were composed of rays. Articles dealing with the wave nature of light can be found in Category:Physical optics.
An optical instrument is a device that processes light waves (or photons), either to enhance an image for viewing or to analyze and determine their characteristic properties. Common examples include periscopes , microscopes , telescopes , and cameras .
The most famous compound optical instruments in science are the microscope and the telescope which were both invented by the Dutch in the late 16th century. [110] Microscopes were first developed with just two lenses: an objective lens and an eyepiece. The objective lens is essentially a magnifying glass and was designed with a very small focal ...