Blog

In Chapter 14, we showed how to determine the axis of a laser beam to which we want to align optical elements and then how to align a Bessel beam to the laser beam axis. This Chapter shows the steps to align optical elements to the reference Bessel beam. With tabletop alignment, you have all […]

At last, I am back to writing more about optical alignment. The hiatus was due to my realization that most readers are not interested in assembling lenses in a tube. Rather, they want to align free-standing optics on tabletops or benches in labs researching topics like laser light interactions with matter, free-space communication, and quantum […]

In Chapter 12, I commented again on classical optical instruments since there was interest in an earlier discussion. This got me thinking about what had changed in optical technology since the period ending about 1950 when there was a rather canonical set of classical optical metrology tools. There has been a huge technological change since […]

There was more interest in Chapter 3 about the classical instruments used for optical alignment than any other chapter to date, and I didn’t have a chance to say all I wanted to, so I will continue the discussion in this Chapter to emphasize how changes in technology have changed the design of these instruments. […]

Measuring the quality of alignment of an assembled compound lens is often necessary. This raises the question of what
axis to use as a reference axis for this measurement. We suggest that the reference axis should be the optical axis of the
assembled system and that this axis is unique for each assembly.