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A beam splitter is an optical device
Optical instrument

An optical instrument either processes light waves to enhance an image for viewing, or analyzes light waves to determine one of a number of characteristic properties....
 that splits a beam of light
Light

Light, or visible light, is electromagnetic radiation of a wavelength that is Visible spectrum to the human eye , or up to 380?750 nm. In the broader field of physics, light is sometimes used to refer to electromagnetic radiation of all wavelengths, whether visible or not....
 in two. It is the crucial part of most interferometer
Interferometry

Interferometry is the technique of diagnosing the properties of two or more waves by studying the pattern of interference created by their Superposition principle....
s.

In its most common form, a cube, it is made from two triangular glass prism
Prism (optics)

In optics, a prism is a transparent optical element with flat, polished surfaces that refraction light. The exact angles between the surfaces depend on the application....
s which are glued together at their base using Canada balsam
Canada balsam

Canada balsam, also called Canada turpentine or balsam of fir, is a turpentine which is made from the resin of the Abies balsamea tree ....
. The thickness of the resin layer is adjusted such that (for a certain wavelength
Wavelength

In physics, wavelength is the distance between repeating units of a propagating wave of a given frequency. It is commonly designated by the Greek language letter lambda ....
) half of the light incident through one "port" (i.e. face of the cube) is reflected
Reflection (physics)

Reflection is the change in direction of a wavefront at an wiktionary:interface between two differentmedium so that the wavefront returns into the medium from which it originated....
 and the other half is transmitted.






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Encyclopedia


A beam splitter is an optical device
Optical instrument

An optical instrument either processes light waves to enhance an image for viewing, or analyzes light waves to determine one of a number of characteristic properties....
 that splits a beam of light
Light

Light, or visible light, is electromagnetic radiation of a wavelength that is Visible spectrum to the human eye , or up to 380?750 nm. In the broader field of physics, light is sometimes used to refer to electromagnetic radiation of all wavelengths, whether visible or not....
 in two. It is the crucial part of most interferometer
Interferometry

Interferometry is the technique of diagnosing the properties of two or more waves by studying the pattern of interference created by their Superposition principle....
s.

In its most common form, a cube, it is made from two triangular glass prism
Prism (optics)

In optics, a prism is a transparent optical element with flat, polished surfaces that refraction light. The exact angles between the surfaces depend on the application....
s which are glued together at their base using Canada balsam
Canada balsam

Canada balsam, also called Canada turpentine or balsam of fir, is a turpentine which is made from the resin of the Abies balsamea tree ....
. The thickness of the resin layer is adjusted such that (for a certain wavelength
Wavelength

In physics, wavelength is the distance between repeating units of a propagating wave of a given frequency. It is commonly designated by the Greek language letter lambda ....
) half of the light incident through one "port" (i.e. face of the cube) is reflected
Reflection (physics)

Reflection is the change in direction of a wavefront at an wiktionary:interface between two differentmedium so that the wavefront returns into the medium from which it originated....
 and the other half is transmitted. Polarizing beam splitters
Polarizer

A polarizer is a device that converts an polarization or mixed-polarization beam of electromagnetic waves into a beam with a single polarization state ....
, such as the Wollaston prism
Wollaston prism

A Wollaston prism is an optical device, invented by William Hyde Wollaston, that manipulates Polarization light. It separates randomly polarized or unpolarized light into two Orthogonality, linearly polarizer outgoing beams....
, use birefringent materials, splitting light into beams of differing polarization
Polarization

Polarization is a property of waves that describes the orientation of their oscillations. For transverse waves such as many electromagnetic waves, it describes the orientation of the oscillations in the plane perpendicular to the wave's direction of travel....
.

Another design is the use of a half-silvered mirror
Mirror

A mirror is an object with one surface polished, which leads to reflection and another opaque. The most familiar type of mirror is the plane mirror, which has a flat surface....
. This is a plate of glass
Glass

Glass generally refers to a Hardness, brittle, transparency amorphous solid, such as that used for windows, many Glass Bottles, or eyewear, including, but not limited to, soda-lime glass, borosilicate glass, acrylic glass, sugar glass, Muscovite , or aluminium oxynitride....
 with a thin coating
Coating

Coating is a covering that is applied to an object. The aim of applying coatings is to improve surface properties of a bulk material usually referred to as a Substrate ....
 of aluminum (usually deposited from aluminum vapor
Vapor

A vapor or vapour is a substance in the gas phase at a temperature lower than its critical temperature.This means that the vapor can be condensation to a liquid or to a solid by increasing its pressure, without reducing the temperature....
) with the thickness of the aluminum coating such that, of light incident at a 45 degree angle, one half is transmitted and one half is reflected. Instead of a metallic coating, a dielectric
Dielectric

A dielectric is a nonconducting substance, i.e. an Insulator . The term was coined by William Whewell in response to a request from Michael Faraday....
 optical coating
Optical coating

An optical coating is a thin-film optics of material deposited on an optical component such as a lens or mirror, which alters the way in which the optic Reflection and transmission light....
 may be used. Such mirrors are commonly used as output coupler
Output coupler

An output coupler is a partially reflective mirror used in lasers to extract a portion of the laser beam from the optical resonator.Lasers operate by Reflection light between two or more mirrors which have an active laser medium between them....
s in laser construction
Laser construction

A laser is constructed from three principal parts:*An energy source ,*A gain medium or Active laser medium, and*Two or more mirrors that form an optical resonator....
. Similarly, a very thin pellicle
Pellicle mirror

A pellicle mirror is a Transparency mirror used in a single-lens reflex camera: some of the light is reflected through the pentaprism towards the viewfinder, while the rest is transmitted to the film plane....
 film may also be used as a beam splitter.

A third version of the beam splitter is a dichroic mirrored prism
Dichroic prism

A dichroic prism is a prism that splits light into two beams of differing wavelength . They are usually constructed of one or more glass prisms with dichroism optical coatings that selectively reflect or transmit light depending on the light's wavelength....
 assembly which uses dichroic
Dichroism

Dichroism has two related but distinct meanings in optics. A dichroic material is either one which causes visible light to be split up into distinct beams of different wavelengths , or one in which light rays having different polarizations are absorbed by different amounts....
 optical coating
Optical coating

An optical coating is a thin-film optics of material deposited on an optical component such as a lens or mirror, which alters the way in which the optic Reflection and transmission light....
s to split the incoming light into three beams, one each of red, green, and blue. Such a device was used in multi-tube color television cameras and also in the three-film Technicolor
Technicolor

Technicolor is the trademark for a series of Color film processes pioneered by Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation , now a division of Thomson SA....
 movie cameras. It is also used in the 3 LCD projectors to separate colors and in ellipsoidal reflector spotlights to eliminate heat radiation.

Beam splitters are also used in stereo photography to shoot stereo photos using a single shot with a non-stereo camera. The device attaches in place of the lens
Photographic lens

A photographic lens is an optics lens or assembly of lenses used in conjunction with a camera body and mechanism to make images of objects either on photographic film or on other media capable of storing an image chemically or electronically....
 of the camera. Some argue that "image splitter" is a more proper name for this device. Beam splitters with single mode fiber for PON networks
Passive optical network

A passive optical network is a point-to-multipoint, fiber to the premises network architecture in which unpowered optical splitters are used to enable a single optical fiber to serve multiple premises, typically 32-128....
 use the single mode behavior to split the beam. The splitter is done by physically splicing two fibers "together" as an X.