Edmund Optics, a provider of optical components, has introduced its Techspec achromatic cylinder lenses. Although these lenses are similar to a standard cylinder lens in design and function, they have the extra benefit of reducing the spherical and chromatic aberration at the image plane, for greatly improved image quality.
When the lenses are used with a monochromatic light source, such as a laser diode, these versatile lenses will create a spot 50-90 per cent smaller than standard cylinder lenses, depending on the NA of the lens used. When used with a broadband light source, the lenses will minimise chromatic aberration, resulting in focused lines with less colour separation, and the production of brilliant anamorphic images.
Techspec achromatic cylinder lenses are positive cylindrical lenses ideally suited for any application that requires magnification in only one dimension. Unlike spherical lenses, cylindrical lenses focus incident light only in a single dimension. This feature is useful for a wide variety of applications including line generation with laser diodes or focusing a diverging beam onto a linear detector array.
The lenses offer numerous advantages over a comparable diameter and focal length singlet lens. An achromatic cylinder lens is a type of doublet lens made up of a positive low-index 'crown' element cemented to a negative high-index 'flint' element that are designed to work together to reduce spherical and chromatic aberrations. Using a doublet design gives the user additional design freedom and allows for further performance optimisation.
The lenses are available in 12.5mm diameter with focal lengths of 25mm, 50mm, 75mm and 100mm.
