Cardinal point (optics)

Summary

In Gaussian optics, the cardinal points consist of three pairs of points located on the optical axis of a rotationally symmetric, focal, optical system. These are the focal points, the principal points, and the nodal points. For ideal systems, the basic imaging properties such as image size, location, and orientation are completely determined by the locations of the cardinal points; in fact only four points are necessary: the focal points and either the principal or nodal points. The only ideal system that has been achieved in practice is the plane mirror, however the cardinal points are widely used to approximate the behavior of real optical systems. Cardinal points provide a way to analytically simplify a system with many components, allowing the imaging characteristics of the system to be approximately determined with simple calculations. Explanation The cardinal points lie on the optical axis of the optical system. Each point is defined by the effect the optical syste

Official source

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_point_(optics)

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Are Photonic Nanojets Achromatic?

Myun Sik Kim, Toralf Scharf, Michail Symeonidis

In this work we study the evolution of the photonic nanojet (PNJ) phenomenon as the ratio of the sphere's diameter over the illumination wavelength changes, for microspheres with diameters from 2 mu m to 100 mu m. We measure the focal point position by using 3D intensity scanning and identifying the maximum-intensity spot. We also measure the spot size at the focal plane using both intensity and phase data. Finally we use this information to compare the PNJ's behavior to that of a ball lens and evaluate the importance of chromatic effect in the PNJ phenomenon.

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Photonic Nanojet engineering: Focal point shaping with scattering phenomena of dielectric microspheres

Hans Peter Herzig, Myun Sik Kim, Toralf Scharf

We experimentally engineer Nanojets produced by dielectric spheres by varying the illumination and observe the effect with a high-resolution interference microscope (HRIM). Converging and diverging spherical wavefronts and Bessel- Gauss beams are considered. We find that the diverging wavefront pushes Nanojets away from the surface of the sphere without change of the spot size. This allows earning several micrometers of working distance contrary to the Nanojet confined at the sphere’s surface. When the radius of curvature of the incident wavefront is greater than about 5 times the sphere size, the Nanojet moves back to the sphere surface like it is found for plane wave incidence. On-axis Bessel- Gauss beam illumination with the central lobe covering the whole sphere leads to the same results as the plane wave case. Off-axis Bessel beam illumination can generate multiple-spot Nanojets. We demonstrate the separation of such spots of about 220 nm at 642 nm. This separation is smaller than the feature sizes defined by the diffraction limit at this wavelength. We discuss briefly applications of engineered Nanojets for nano-lithography and near-field sensing.

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SPIE2011