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Visulization of flux through differential area and solid angle. As always ^ is the unit normal to the incident surface A, = ^, and ^ is a unit vector in the direction of incident flux on the area element, θ is the angle between them.
The principal ray or chief ray (sometimes known as the b ray) in an optical system is the meridional ray that starts at an edge of an object and passes through the center of the aperture stop. [ 5 ] [ 8 ] [ 7 ] The distance between the chief ray (or an extension of it for a virtual image) and the optical axis at an image location defines the ...
Geometrical optics, or ray optics, is a model of optics that describes light propagation in terms of rays. The ray in geometrical optics is an abstraction useful for approximating the paths along which light propagates under certain circumstances. The simplifying assumptions of geometrical optics include that light rays:
In geometrical optics, for each object ray entering an optical system, a single and unique image ray exits from the system. In mathematical terms, the optical system performs a transformation that maps every object ray to an image ray. [1] The object ray and its associated image ray are said to be conjugate to each other. This term also applies ...
In geometric optics, the paraxial approximation is a small-angle approximation used in Gaussian optics and ray tracing of light through an optical system (such as a lens). [1] [2] A paraxial ray is a ray that makes a small angle (θ) to the optical axis of the system, and lies close to the axis throughout the system. [1]
For geometric optics—i.e., to incoherent light and to objects larger than the wavelength of light—the fundamental carrier of light is a ray. The measure for the amount of light traveling along a ray is radiance, denoted by L and measured in W·sr −1 ·m −2; i.e., watts (W) per steradian (sr) per square meter (m 2).
Refraction of light at the interface between two media of different refractive indices, with n 2 > n 1.Since the velocity is lower in the second medium (v 2 < v 1), the angle of refraction θ 2 is less than the angle of incidence θ 1; that is, the ray in the higher-index medium is closer to the normal.
For example, (,) might represent a paraxial ray (i.e., a ray nearly parallel with the optic axis), and (,) might represent a marginal ray (i.e., a ray with the largest angle admitted by the system aperture). An optical imaging system for which this is true in for all rays is said to obey the Abbe sine condition.