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Propagation of a ray through a layer. The transfer-matrix method is a method used in optics and acoustics to analyze the propagation of electromagnetic or acoustic waves through a stratified medium; a stack of thin films.
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.
Real images can be produced by concave mirrors and converging lenses, only if the object is placed further away from the mirror/lens than the focal point, and this real image is inverted. As the object approaches the focal point the image approaches infinity, and when the object passes the focal point the image becomes virtual and is not ...
Geometrical optics, or ray optics, is a model of optics that describes light propagation in terms of rays. The ray in geometrical optics is an abstraction useful for approximating the paths along which light propagates under certain circumstances. The simplifying assumptions of geometrical optics include that light rays:
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:
Light does not actually consist of imaginary rays and light sources are not single-point sources, thus vergence is typically limited to simple ray modeling of optical systems. In a real system, the vergence is a product of the diameter of a light source, its distance from the optics, and the curvature of the optical surfaces.
The mirror equation and magnification equation can be derived geometrically by considering these two rays. A ray that goes from the top of the object through the focal point can be considered instead. Such a ray reflects parallel to the optical axis and also passes through the image point corresponding to the top of the object.
In lens systems, aberrations can be minimized using combinations of convex and concave lenses, or by using aspheric lenses or aplanatic lenses. Lens systems with aberration correction are usually designed by numerical ray tracing. For simple designs, one can sometimes analytically calculate parameters that minimize spherical aberration.