Laser collimation

The word "collimate" comes from the Latin verb collimare, which originated in a misreading of collineare, "to direct in a straight line".[1]

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Collimatinglensvs focusinglens

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Laser light from crystal and some gas lasers is highly collimated because it is formed in an optical cavity between two parallel mirrors, in addition to being coherent. The divergence of high-quality laser beams is commonly less than 1 milliradian, and can be much less for large-diameter beams. Laser diodes emit less collimated light due to their short cavity, and therefore higher collimation requires a collimating lens.

Collimated lightsource

Collimated light is light whose rays are parallel. This light spreads slowly as it travels. The word collimated is related to collinear, because all the rays in collimated light line up with each other.

A collimating lens for a light-emitting-diode (LED) light source is an essential device widely used in lighting engineering. Lens surfaces are calculated by geometrical optics and nonimaging optics. This design progress does not rely on any software optimization and any complex iterative process. This method can be used for any type of light source not only Lambertian. The theoretical model is based on point source. But the practical LED source has a certain size. So in the simulation, an LED chip whose size is 1  mm*1  mm is used to verify the feasibility of the model. The mean results show that the lenses have a very compact structure and good collimating performance. Efficiency is defined as the ratio of the flux in the illuminated plane to the flux from LED source without considering the lens material transmission. Just investigating the loss in the designed lens surfaces, the two types of lenses have high efficiencies of more than 90% and 99%, respectively. Most lighting area (possessing 80% flux) radii are no more than 5 m when the illuminated plane is 200 m away from the light source.

Perfectly collimated light would not spread out with distance at all. No real light is perfectly collimated. Real light will spread a little as it travels. Diffraction prevents anyone from creating a perfectly collimated beam.

Collimatinglens

A perfect parabolic mirror will bring parallel rays to a focus at a single point. Conversely, a point source at the focus of a parabolic mirror will produce a beam of collimated light. Since the source needs to be small, such an optical system cannot produce much optical power. Spherical mirrors are easier to make than parabolic mirrors and they are often used to produce approximately collimated light. Many types of lenses can also produce collimated light from point-like sources.

Laser collimatinglens

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1State Key Laboratory of Transient Optics and Photonics, Xi’an Institute of Optics and Precision Mechanics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi’an 710119, China

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The light from stars (other than the Sun) can be considered collimated for almost any purpose, because they are so far away they have almost no angular size.

A collimating lens for a light-emitting-diode (LED) light source is an essential device widely used in lighting engineering. Lens surfaces are calculated by geometrical optics and nonimaging optics. This design progress does not rely on any software optimization and any complex iterative process. This method can be used for any type of light source not only Lambertian. The theoretical model is based on point source. But the practical LED source has a certain size. So in the simulation, an LED chip whose size is 1  mm*1  mm is used to verify the feasibility of the model. The mean results show that the lenses have a very compact structure and good collimating performance. Efficiency is defined as the ratio of the flux in the illuminated plane to the flux from LED source without considering the lens material transmission. Just investigating the loss in the designed lens surfaces, the two types of lenses have high efficiencies of more than 90% and 99%, respectively. Most lighting area (possessing 80% flux) radii are no more than 5 m when the illuminated plane is 200 m away from the light source.