All Questions
Tagged with optics optical-materials
157
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What is meant by optical density?
I’m trying to research about optical density for a school task, but the definitions online are confusing me.
From what I’ve gotten, optical density is:
how much the intensity of light is increased or ...
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Material that Increases Angle of Incoming Light
Snell's law states that light refracts when entering a substance and refracts back to its original angle upon exit. This is shown in the diagram below from this webpage.
I was wondering if there are ...
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2
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Is magneto-optic Kerr effect discernible for material with natural optical activity?
Magneto-optic Kerr effect requires a system with internal magnetism or external magnetic field and exhibits, say, circular dichroism for reflection measurements. Natural optical activity can have ...
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Can an optical medium be lossless and dispersive?
Occasionally, I come across the phrase "lossless dispersive linear optical medium". How can such a medium be possible mathematically? I mean the real and imaginary parts of the electric ...
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Light splitting plastic film in phone display screen
I was recently taking apart a button-press phone (like this one) and right under the glass protective screen was a thin plastic film.
This is what happens when I place it over a single dot:
As far ...
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What percentage of light gets scattered by a mirror?
Sunlight strikes a mirror at a 45 degree angle. The vast majority of light will be reflected about the normal. Some light will be absorbed by the mirror. Some light will be transmitted through the ...
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251
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How does a broadband dielectric Mirror work?
It is widely known that dielectric mirrors work with several layers of at least two materials which differ in refractive index that are layered, such that partially reflected waves interfere ...
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1
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445
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The numerical aperture of optic fibre and angle of incidence
First
My college book contains the following passage:
the angle of incidence (relative to the fibre axis ) can't be too large else the ray would be refracting on the core\cladding boundary and ...
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Mixed configuration of magneto-optical kerr effect
Typically there are three types of magneto-optical Kerr effect experiments: Polar, longitudinal, and transverse. These three geometries yield very different results regarding what is measured (...
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Difference between permittivities $\varepsilon_\text{opt}$ and $\varepsilon_\infty$?
Very often, in materials physics, we are interested in the relative permittivity at optical frequencies which is usually denoted by $\varepsilon_\text{opt}$ or $\varepsilon_\infty$.
But I'm confused ...
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How can a greater than 1 reflectance coefficient be explained in $\rm SiC$-$\rm SiO_2$ interface?
I ran a simulation using the Transfer Matrix Method to plot the R,T and A curves for a SiC->SiO2 interface. There's a region of incident energies where the |r|^2 I get is higher than 1 and the ...
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Is there a material that allows light to pass perpendicular to the surface, but reflects at an angle?
This is inspired by Michael Steven's new video about optics.
He shows off Selenite, which has the property that light entering on one side travels perpendicularly down the crystal until it exits the ...
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Why can you not create a LED equivalent by illuminating a colored plastic casing?
I would first like to apologize if this is a dumb question.
I understand the physics of color sufficiently well. You have an incoming photon that intercepts an electron on the atom, the electron gets ...
3
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5
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491
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Variations in Refractive Index of Materials
It's quite a common fact that different types of glass have different refractive indices. Most sites I've found attribute these differences to variations in the 'density' of the glass, which is not ...
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Knowing the optical path difference, how do I calculate the resulting image?
Let's say I'm taking a picture through a cube of some material where the index of refraction varies in a known way, such as a GRIN lens. I can calculate the optical path difference as a function of ...