Prism (optics) explained

An optical prism is a transparent optical element with flat, polished surfaces that are designed to refract light. At least one surface must be angled — elements with two parallel surfaces are not prisms. The most familiar type of optical prism is the triangular prism, which has a triangular base and rectangular sides. Not all optical prisms are geometric prisms, and not all geometric prisms would count as an optical prism. Prisms can be made from any material that is transparent to the wavelengths for which they are designed. Typical materials include glass, acrylic and fluorite.

A dispersive prism can be used to break white light up into its constituent spectral colors (the colors of the rainbow) to form a spectrum as described in the following section. Other types of prisms noted below can be used to reflect light, or to split light into components with different polarizations.

Types

Dispersive

See main article: Dispersive prism. Dispersive prisms are used to break up light into its constituent spectral colors because the refractive index depends on wavelength; the white light entering the prism is a mixture of different wavelengths, each of which gets bent slightly differently. Blue light is slowed more than red light and will therefore be bent more than red light.

Spectral dispersion is the best known property of optical prisms, although not the most frequent purpose of using optical prisms in practice.

Reflective

Reflective prisms are used to reflect light, in order to flip, invert, rotate, deviate or displace the light beam. They are typically used to erect the image in binoculars or single-lens reflex cameras – without the prisms the image would be upside down for the user.

Reflective prisms use total internal reflection to achieve near-perfect reflection of light that strikes the facets at a sufficiently oblique angle. Prisms are usually made of optical glass which, combined with anti-reflective coating of input and output facets, leads to significantly lower light loss than metallic mirrors.

Beam-splitting

Various thin-film optical layers can be deposited on the hypotenuse of one right-angled prism, and cemented to another prism to form a beam-splitter cube. Overall optical performance of such a cube is determined by the thin layer.

In comparison with a usual glass substrate, the glass cube provides protection of the thin-film layer from both sides and better mechanical stability. The cube can also eliminate etalon effects, back-side reflection and slight beam deflection.

Polarizing

Another class is formed by polarizing prisms which use birefringence to split a beam of light into components of varying polarization. In the visible and UV regions, they have very low losses and their extinction ratio typically exceeds

105:1

, which is superior to other types of polarizers. They may or may not employ total internal reflection;

These are typically made of a birefringent crystalline material like calcite, but other materials like quartz and α-BBO may be necessary for UV applications, and others (, and ) will extend transmission farther into the infrared spectral range.

Prisms made of isotropic materials like glass will also alter polarization of light, as partial reflection under oblique angles does not maintain the amplitude ratio (nor phase) of the s- and p-polarized components of the light, leading to general elliptical polarization. This is generally an unwanted effect of dispersive prisms. In some cases this can be avoided by choosing prism geometry which light enters and exits under perpendicular angle, by compensation through non-planar light trajectory, or by use of p-polarized light.

Total internal reflection alters only the mutual phase between s- and p-polarized light. Under well chosen angle of incidence, this phase is close to

\pi/4

.

Depolarizers

Birefringent crystals can be assembled in a way that leads to apparent depolarization of the light.

Depolarization would not be observed for an ideal monochromatic plane wave, as actually both devices turn reduced temporal coherence or spatial coherence, respectively, of the beam into decoherence of its polarization components.

Other uses

Total internal reflection in prisms finds numerous uses through optics, plasmonics and microscopy. In particular:

Other uses of prisms are based on their beam-deviating refraction:

In optometry

See also: Prism correction. By shifting corrective lenses off axis, images seen through them can be displaced in the same way that a prism displaces images. Eye care professionals use prisms, as well as lenses off axis, to treat various orthoptics problems:

Prism spectacles with a single prism perform a relative displacement of the two eyes, thereby correcting eso-, exo, hyper- or hypotropia.

In contrast, spectacles with prisms of equal power for both eyes, called yoked prisms (also: conjugate prisms, ambient lenses or performance glasses) shift the visual field of both eyes to the same extent.[5]

See also

Further reading

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Definition of BIPRISM . Merriam-Webster . 2023-02-06 . 2023-02-09.
  2. Web site: Fresnel biprism experiment - Wave Optics, Physics . eSaral . 2022-05-06 . 2023-11-13.
  3. 10.1117/1.1556393. B.D. . Duncan. Wide-angle achromatic prism beam steering for infrared countermeasure applications . Opt. Eng.. 42. 4. 1038–1047 . 2003. 2003OptEn..42.1038D . P.J. . Bos . V. . Sergan .
  4. Book: Loenen, Nick. Wooden Boat Building: How to Build a Dragon Class Sailboat. February 2012. FriesenPress. 9781770974067.
  5. Child Psychiatry and Human Development. 1996. 27. 2. 81–91. 8936794. Kaplan. M. Postural orientation modifications in autism in response to ambient lenses. Carmody. D. P.. Gaydos. A. 10.1007/BF02353802. 37007723.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Prism (optics)".

Except where otherwise indicated, Everything.Explained.Today is © Copyright 2009-2024, A B Cryer, All Rights Reserved. Cookie policy.