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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Holding pattern Small clusters of caesium atoms (pink blobs) were held in a vertical optical lattice. A laser then splits each atom into a quantum state in which half of the atom was closer to a ...

Grating-coupled interferometry (GCI) is a surface based, a label-free optical sensing technique used for real-time binding kinetic measurements. 1 Typically, GCI is used to detect binding events ...

Accurately controlling film thickness and uniformity is extremely important for both throughput and performance in the automotive, aerospace, semiconductor, medical, and research industries. White ...