Optical materials are transparent materials from which optical lenses, prisms, windows, waveguides, and second-surface mirrors can be made. They are required in most optical instruments.
Most optical materials are rigid solids, but flexible and elastic materials are used for special functions. Contained liquids can also be used as optical materials.
Known optical materials include amorphous materials and crystalline materials:
Glass
Plastics
Polycarbonate
Poly(methyl methacrylate)
Sodium chloride
Strontium fluoride
Synthetic diamond
Zinc sulfide
Optical materials useful with infrared light include:
Silicon (1.2–7 μm)
Zinc selenide
Non-linear optical materials or nonlinear media transform light in various ways in nonlinear optics.
Non-linear optical materials include:
Barium borate
Some materials (optical and non-optical) can be made into first-surface mirrors, by silvering them or plating them with metal. Some metals can be highly polished, providing both support and the reflective surface of first-surface mirrors.
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Brewster's angle (also known as the polarization angle) is an angle of incidence at which light with a particular polarization is perfectly transmitted through a transparent dielectric surface, with no reflection. When unpolarized light is incident at this angle, the light that is reflected from the surface is therefore perfectly polarized. This special angle of incidence is named after the Scottish physicist Sir David Brewster (1781–1868).
The optical properties of a material define how it interacts with light. The optical properties of matter are studied in optical physics, a subfield of optics. The optical properties of matter include: Refractive index Dispersion Transmittance and Transmission coefficient Absorption Scattering Turbidity Reflectance and Reflectivity (reflection coefficient) Albedo Perceived color Fluorescence Phosphorescence Photoluminescence Optical bistability Dichroism Birefringence Optical activity Photosensitivity A basic distinction is between isotropic materials, which exhibit the same properties regardless of the direction of the light, and anisotropic ones, which exhibit different properties when light passes through them in different directions.
Soft matter or soft condensed matter is a subfield of condensed matter comprising a variety of physical systems that are deformed or structurally altered by thermal or mechanical stress of the magnitude of thermal fluctuations. These materials share an important common feature in that predominant physical behaviors occur at an energy scale comparable with room temperature thermal energy (of order of kT), and that entropy is considered the dominant factor. At these temperatures, quantum aspects are generally unimportant.
The physical principles of laser light materials interactions are introduced with a large number of industrial application examples. Materials processing lasers are developing further and further, the
To present and discuss important recent contributions in the field of inorganic chemistry with an emphasis on fundamental aspects and properties.Literature seminars based on selected publications,eman
Polarization (also polarisation) is a property of transverse waves which specifies the geometrical orientation of the oscillations. In a transverse wave, the direction of the oscillation is perpendicular to the direction of motion of the wave. A simple example of a polarized transverse wave is vibrations traveling along a taut string (see image); for example, in a musical instrument like a guitar string. Depending on how the string is plucked, the vibrations can be in a vertical direction, horizontal direction, or at any angle perpendicular to the string.
Optics is the branch of physics that studies the behaviour and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it. Optics usually describes the behaviour of visible, ultraviolet, and infrared light. Because light is an electromagnetic wave, other forms of electromagnetic radiation such as X-rays, microwaves, and radio waves exhibit similar properties.
Physics is the natural science of matter, involving the study of matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. Physics is one of the most fundamental scientific disciplines, with its main goal being to understand how the universe behaves. A scientist who specializes in the field of physics is called a physicist. Physics is one of the oldest academic disciplines and, through its inclusion of astronomy, perhaps the oldest.
Soft matter consists of complex molecules that can undergo drastic structural transformations under mild changes of chemical and physical conditions. Since a wide variety of chemical, physical and biological processes occur at soft matter interfaces, they ...
In nature strong colors play an important role in scaring away predators or finding a mate. Often, the strongest and brightest colors arise from coherent scattering and reflection on periodic structures on a length scale of several micro- or nanometers. Un ...