Low coherence interferometry (LCI) is an optical technique in which light is used as an instrument to obtain high resolution optical images in a great diversity of materials. It is possible to find in the literature, a variety of configurations with different names, based on the same principle: low coherence reflectometry (OLCR), optical coherence tomography (OCT), white light interferometry (W...

The perception of light in nature comes through the photopigment molecules of our retina. The objective of this paper is to relate our modern understanding of the quantum mechanical chemical processes in the retinal molecules with our observation of superposition (“interference”) fringes due to multiple light beams. The issue of “interference” is important for two subtle reasons. First, we do n...

Light scattered by a regular structure of atoms can exhibit interference signatures, similar to the classical double-slit. These first-order interferences, however, vanish for strong light intensities, restricting potential applications. Here, we show how to overcome these limitations to quantum interference in strong fields. First, we recover the first-order interference in strong fields via a...

The performance of wireless infrared transmission systems for indoor use is severely impaired by the noise and interference induced by natural and artificial ambient light. In order to combat the effects of ambient light on the system performance, both optical filtering and electrical filtering is usually adopted. However, even when resorting to these techniques, the optical power penalty impos...

Single-photon interference is a beautiful manifestation of the wave–particle duality of light and the double-slit Gedankenexperiment is a standard lecture example for introducing quantum mechanical reality. Interference arises only if each photon can follow several (classical) paths from the source to the detector, and if one does not have the possibility to determine which specific path the ph...

A simple and easy-to-use miniphotometer has been designed; the expense involved amounts to only a fraction of that required for large commercially available microphotometers. The instrument can be employed for routine investigations and for teaching reflected light microscopy in conjunction with standard reflected light microscopes. The reflectance of grains down to 50/xm size can be measured i...

Trapping atoms by dressing them with rf radiation has been realised with a wide range of experimental and theoretical configurations [1–21]. The first experimental trapping with rf dressing [3] resulted in an egg-shell type potential with the atoms confined to the surface of the shell. Gravity caused the atoms to occupy the lower part of the egg-shell. Tubes of dressed atoms have been used to s...

PURPOSE To synthesize an interference color chart for the specific tear lipid layer interference camera, DR-1, for the conversion of the tear film lipid layer thickness into color graphic information--that is, for the quantification of the tear interference image--by a colorimetric approach. METHODS Because the color of the tear lipid layer interference image is visualized by a white light so...

When a tilted and defocused cat-eye optical lens is irradiated by laser beam, the reflected light-waves can be regarded as an off-axis spherical wave. Based on this idea and the theory of angular spectrum, our research has been directed towards some formulas describing the interference of the cat-eye reflected light with the reference incidence light. Through numerical computation, relationship...