1. The Ronchi Test by M. Mansuripur: In this centennial of Vasco Ronchi's birth it seemed appropriate to devote one of these columns to the well-known method of testing optical systems that he developed in the 1920's. Published in Optics & Photonics News, 42-46, July 1997.

2. External Conical Refraction by M. Mansuripur: Internal conical refraction happens when collimated beam of light, upon entering a biaxial birefringent crystal, spreads out into a hollow cone and exits the crystal slab in the form of two concentric cylinders of light. The case of external conical refraction, which, in a way, is the same phenomenon in reverse, is the subject of this article. Published in Optics & Photonics News, 50-52, August 1997.

3. The Faraday Effect by M. Mansuripur: Michael Faraday (1791-1867) was born in a village near London into the family of a blacksmith. His family was too poor to keep him in school and, at the age of 13, he took a job as an errand boy in a bookshop. A year later he was apprenticed as a bookbinder for a term of seven years. Faraday was not only binding the books but was also reading many of them, which excited in him a burning interest in science. Published in Optics & Photonics News, November 1999.

4. Projection Photolithography by M. Mansuripur and Rongguang Liang: Photolithography is the technology of reproducing patterns using light. Developed originally for reproducing engravings and photographs, and later used to make printing plates, photolithography was found ideal in the 1960s for mass-producing integrated circuits.

5. Launching Light into a Fiber by Masud Mansuripur: A typical single-mode silica glass fiber has a mode profile that is well approximated by a Gaussian beam. At l=1.55mm, this Gaussian mode has a (1/e2 intensity) diameter of ~ 10mm. Published in Optics & Photonics News, August 2001.

6. Omni - directional Dielectric Mirrors by Masud Mansuripur: An omni-directional dielectric mirror (also known as a one-dimensional photonic bandgap crystal) exhibits 100% reflectivity at all angels of incidence and for all states of incident polarization. Published in Optics & Photonics News, September 2001.

7. The Uncertainty Principle in Classical Optics by Masud Mansuripur: In the classical electromagnetic theory the wave-vector k=(2p/l)s underlies the Fourier space of propagating (or radiative) fields. The k-vector combines into a single entity the wavelenth l and the unit vector s that signifies the beam's propagation direction. Published in Optics & Photonics News, January 2002.

8. Doppler Shift, Stellar Aberration, and Convection of Light by Moving Media by Masud Mansuripur: The characteristics of a beam of light emanating from a source in uniform motion with respect to an observer differ from those measured when the source is stationary. In general, it is irrelevant whether the source is stationary and the observer in motion or vice versa; the observed characteristics depend only on the relative motion. Published in Optics & Photonics News, April 2002.

9. The Optics of Semiconductor Diode Lasers by Masud Mansuripur and Ewan M. Wright: In this article we describe the basic features of the beam of light emitted by a diode laser, and discuss methods to analyze and manipulate this beam. Published in Optics & Photonics News, July 2002.

10. Interaction of Light with Subwavelength Structures by Masud Mansuripur, Armis R. Zakharian, and Jerome V. Moloney: When a light field interacts with structures that have complex geometric features comparable in size to the wavelength of the light, it is not permissible to invoke the assumptions of the classical diffraction theory, which simplify the problem and allow for approximate solutions. For such cases, direct numerical solutions of the governing equations are sought through approximating the continuous time and space derivatives by the appropriate difference operators. Published in Optics & Photonics News, March 2003.

11. Transmission of Light Through Small Elliptical Apertures,
    • Part 1
    • Part 2

    by Masud Mansuripur, Armis R. Zakharian, and Jerome V. Moloney: The apertures of classical optics simply block those parts of an incident wavefront that fall outside the aperture, allowing everything else to go through intact. Moreover, multiple apertures act upon an incident beam independently of each other, polarization effects are usually negligible (i.e., scalar diffraction), and it is not necessary to keep track of both the electric- and the magnetic-field components of the beam. Published in Optics & Photonics News, March, April 2004.

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