OPN April 1999
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Optics Inside an Atom
C.R. Stroud, JR., Michael W. Noel
This article provides a brief overview of atom interferometry, noting what's been learned about the behavior of atoms using the technique and describing applications in fields such as chemistry and computing. more>>
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The Shack-Hartmann Wavefront Sensor
Masud Mansuripur
Roland Shack invented the device now known as the Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor in the early 1970s. This sensor, which has in recent years been commercialized, measures the phase distribution over the cross-section of a given beam of light without relying on optical interference and, therefore, does not require a reference beam. more>>
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Wide-angle DMD Projection Lens
J. Brian Caldwell
Projectors using two digital micro-mirror devices (DMDs) chips were developed to take advantage of long-lifetime, short-arc metal halide lamps that have recently become available. These lamps emit much more light in the blue-green portion of the visible spectrum than in the red portion. Two chip projection systems can effectively use this type of lamp by splitting the spectrum into a red portion and a blue-green portion using dichroic filters. more>>