What Are Cylindrical Lenses? - Avantier Inc.

What Are Cylinder Lenses?

What are cylindrical lenses? Cylinder (cylindrical) lenses are lenses that have at least one part that resembles a cylinder. They are similar to spherical lenses because they both use curved surfaces to focus or spread light. However, cylindrical lenses can only focus or spread light in one direction and don’t change how light moves in the vertical direction. This can’t be done with spherical lenses because they focus or expand light in a way that is the same no matter which way you turn it. 

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Cylinder lenses are an important part of controlling and shaping laser beams. For example, they change the shape of laser sheets and make elliptical beams round. Due to the cylinder lens’s uneven shape and the unique needs of the manufacturing process, the wedge, center, and axial torsion must be defined and appropriately controlled.

Usage of Cylindrical Lenses

Correcting Astigmatism

Cylindrical lenses are commonly used in ophthalmology for the treatment of astigmatism. A corneal distortion is typically the cause of astigmatic vision. If your cornea is astigmatic, the points of focus will be off on each of the three main axes. Using a cylindrical optical lens, we can shift the focal point of one axis so that it lies over the other.

Laser Scanning Microscopy

They are commonly used in conjunction with acoustic-optic deflectors, allowing the focal point of a variable lens to move side to side without movable parts. For laser scanning microscopy, the spherical lens adjusts the image and helps to focus the light point on the appropriate plane.

Entertainment

Digital cinema cameras use cylindrical optical assembly to squeeze widescreen footage onto 35mm film. Furthermore, digital/laser projectors use the same technology to stretch the footage to be correctly displayed on a widescreen.

Laser Line Scanning

This method converts the physical form of a 3D item into a digital representation. It is especially useful in this field as well as prototyping, gardening, and building construction. This scanning method calculates the amount of distortion introduced to a straight line by a non-flat surface while using a cylindrical lens. With the help of cameras and triangulation, we can measure how the laser line shape changes and approximate the object’s shape. 

Optical Spectroscopy

Cylindrical lenses are commonly used in the construction of optical spectrometers. It focuses light into a single line for a linear photodetector when placed in front of a diffractive grating element.

Laser Beam Shape Correction

A laser’s light should be a perfect circle, but semiconductor lasers have an elliptical beam profile. So, there is a need to change the shape of the beam to make it collimate and connect it to any optical fiber. This can be done by putting a cylindrical lens in front of the laser beam with its central part perpendicular to the fast axis.

Ⅰ. What is an achromatic lens?

With the continuous development of science and technology, the optical industry is also booming, and optical lenses are used more and more widely. Today, let's learn the specific content and working principle of the most common achromatic lens.

An achromatic lens is a lens formed by cementing two optical components, a positive low refractive index and a negative high refractive index.

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Compared to single-piece glass lenses, the cemented design of the double-piece lens provides the user with additional design freedom and further optimizes lens performance, so compared with the monolithic lens with equal diameter and focal length, achromatic lens has more obvious advantages.

Achromatic lens is made of concave and convex lenses made of two glasses with different optical properties. It is often used for convex lenses made of glass with small refractive index and large dispersion power, and concave lenses made of glass with large refractive index and small dispersion power.

Achromatic lenses generally can only superimpose the images and points of the two main colors of light that are considered to be the main ones, thereby eliminating the chromatic aberration of the two colors of light.

Ⅱ. The working principle of achromatic lens

Chromatic aberration is caused by the difference in the dispersion and refractive index of light of different wavelengths in the glass, resulting in different focal points of light of different wavelengths, using the combination of different materials.

Achromatic lens has in various types of configurations, the common ones being positive achromats, negative achromats, triplet achromats, and aspheric achromats.

Note that an achromatic lens can be a doublet lens(two elements) or triplet (three elements), and the number of elements is independent of the number of rays corrected by the lens.

In other words, an achromatic lens in a doublet or triplet configuration can correct both red and blue light in the visible range.

Ⅲ. What makes achromatic lenses important?

Because achromatic lenses focus the colors at the same point, they allow the user to fully focus the image. Compared with uncorrected singlet lens, achromatic lens can produce clearer image, which is easier to observe and obtain more accurate perception.

Achromatic lenses revolutionized imaging when they were first introduced, and while the quality of lenses has continued to improve, achromatic lenses remain a staple in both scientific and non-scientific optical applications.

Ⅳ. The advantages of achromatic lens components

Improved image quality: Achromatic lenses eliminate color banding, greatly improving image brightness and clarity, a fact that is especially true for polychromatic imaging.

Efficient light transmission: Unlike singlet lenses, the on-axis performance of achromatic lenses does not degrade with aperture size, allowing you to utilize the entire transparent aperture.

Cost-effective production: Although achromatic lenses can be improved, these lenses are much more expensive, and for most purposes, achromatic lenses provide a lot of correction, making them the most cost-effective way to obtain clear white light images.

To produce the desired color correction, achromatic lens manufacturers must use two or more types of optical glass, which have different amounts of wave dispersion.

Typically, the process involves concave lens elements with high dispersion and convex lens elements with low dispersion. The two lenses are mounted so that the deformation of one lens closely cancels the deformation of the other lens.

This type of achromatic lens is called an achromatic doublet lens and is the most common type of achromatic lens, although triplets also exist.

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