What’s new?

Nowadays, Bessel-like beams and similar kinds of non-diffracting beams are not just generated in the lab but have been put to use in different applications. To better exploit such beams, their properties must be studied and understood more deeply. As a typical example, we demonstrate how to generate Bessel beams with an axicon, and, following the research work of O. Brzobohatý et al., we investigate how the round tip of the axicon may influence the resulting Bessel beam.

We are excited to present you insights into our software development. We are starting a webinar series and the first webinar will already take place on 27 May.
Stay tuned and register for the first one.

In order to adapt to different time zones worldwide, we will hold this webinar twice (all times CET):

27 May | 10:00 – 11:00
27 May | 16:00 – 17:00

Optical metrology is an essential technology for precise measurement. For example, it is often used for surface testing and therefore plays an important role in quality control. VirtualLab Fusion can help you build up various types of interferometers and include the different optical surfaces and components of the system, and even alignment mistakes like tilt and shift, in the simulation. Two widely used interferometers – Mach-Zehnder and Fizeau – are demonstrated as examples.

How well is a beam collimated? This is an essential question for many optics, especially in laser applications. Shearing interferometry is a simple and convenient way to test beam collimation quality, and we demonstrate this in VirtualLab Fusion. The key device in the interferometer is a shear plate, with high-quality flat surfaces and usually with a small wedge angle. We can model the multiple interactions between light and the shear plate easily with the help of the channel concept in VirtualLab Fusion.

In contrast to a traditional optical lens, which works due to light refracting at the curved surfaces of the lens, a GRIN lens can make light focus using only flat surfaces. The flat shape and the working principle of such lenses provide advantages – convenience in mounting and even the possibility of being fused to other devices, like an optical fiber. VirtualLab Fusion provides a fully electromagnetic modeling technology for light propagation in GRIN media. We show here an example of a GRIN lens.

F-Theta lenses are often employed in high-performance laser scanning systems. They are designed to produce focal spots whose lateral displacement depends linearly on the scanning angle, a property which is typically required in e.g. laser material processing applications. In VirtualLab Fusion, we provide a scanning source for such scenarios, and with different field solvers used in connection, the performance of such scanning lens systems can be evaluated conveniently.

Fluorescent microscopy has proven to be a very effective technology for both biological and medical applications. When constructed in a reflective configuration, both the illuminating light and the light emitted by the fluorescent sample, which have different wavelengths, pass through the same objective lens of the fluorescent microscope. We take such an example and demonstrate the resulting chromatic effects for a selected high-NA objective lens in VirtualLab Fusion. Additionally, we compare the results of the analysis for the real objective lens with the ideal situation obtained using the Debye-Wolf integral.

Fourier microscopy, in contrast to traditional imaging techniques, enables the direct observation of the spatial frequency distribution. Therefore, it is nowadays widely used for e.g. surface-plasma observation, photonic-crystal imaging, and so on. With VirtualLab Fusion, we model a complete Fourier microscope system and use it for single-molecule imaging. Specifically, we demonstrate the influence of several physical-optics effects, including the Fresnel loss at each optical interface and the diffraction from lens apertures.