When astronomers talk about an optical telescope, they often mention the size of its mirror. That's because the larger your mirror, the sharper your view of the heavens can be. It's known as resolving ...

Purdue faculty dedicate countless hours to exploring the frontiers of their respective fields, pushing the boundaries of knowledge and contributing to the ever-evolving landscape of academia. To ...

White light interferometry (WLI) is a contact-free optical method for measuring surface height. It uses the phase difference between the light reflected off a reference mirror and the target sample to ...

Interferometry basics Three principle values describe any wave: amplitude, frequency, and phase. In fact, the basic equation for a sinusoid of frequency (ω) or period (2π/ ω) is: f (t) = A cos (ω t + ...

Fringe conference can be traced to the automatic processing of fringe patterns. The term “patterns” evokes an image of flowing lines elegantly wrapped around surface contours. However, automatic ...

Researchers have moved a step closer to achieving quantum-noise-limited measurements using laser interferometry – a technique routinely employed for detecting the motion and displacement of tiny ...

Warming up: illustration of the interferometer. (Courtesy: APS / Alan Stonebreaker) An atom interferometer that does not have to be cooled to cryognenic temperatures has been created by physicists in ...

Microlenses have many applications, such as coupling light into fiber optics, enhancing light source uniformity in microdisplays, and focusing light onto imaging sensors in mobile phone cameras.