{"id":674,"date":"2013-07-05T19:20:28","date_gmt":"2013-07-05T17:20:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/antoine.wojdyla.free.fr\/blog\/?p=674"},"modified":"2013-12-08T05:01:29","modified_gmt":"2013-12-08T03:01:29","slug":"lab-resources-in-optics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/antoine.wojdyla.fr\/blog\/2013\/07\/05\/lab-resources-in-optics\/","title":{"rendered":"Lab resources I- Optics"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometimes, when trying something new in optics, it is very hard to know where to begin, and find knowledgeable source. I want to share a small collection of resources that I had found immensely useful.
\n“Basic Lab Skills” by Steve Cundiff (pdf<\/a>) is a short must-read for every experimental optician.
\n“Rule of thumb in Opto-Mechanics” by Katie Schwterz (pdf<\/a>) is also very good to have a sense of what can be done with an experiment.
\nrefractiveindex.info<\/a> is a great ressource to know the refractive index of many materials.
\nThe Encyclopedia for Photonics and Laser Technology<\/a>,\u00a0maintained by Rudiger Paschotta is an excellent ressource, and very knowledgeable about ultra-fast optics<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p><\/p>The\u00a0CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics<\/a> is a great ressource for many of your needs
\nMore generally, a lot of information can be found the application or technical notes from CVI-Melles Griot<\/a>, Newport<\/a> (2<\/a>), Edmund Optics<\/a> or Maxim<\/a> (electronics).
\nFor French engineers, Techniques de l’Ing\u00e9nieur<\/a> is a very good ressource– if you have an access !<\/p>For every day presentation needs, I use\u00a0paint.net<\/a> for dealing with images, imageJ<\/a> when it get more complicated and Inkscape<\/a> when it has to be vectorial (i.e. Latex).
\nI write my reports with TexMaker<\/a>; it is not the best interface, but is has the advantage of being free, having a built-in viewer and supporting utf8, which makes it easier for accents and some special symbols and is more future-oriented (I hate TeXnicCenter, and I paid for Inlage<\/a>, which proved to be instable : several crashes later, I gave up).<\/p>To manage my bibliography, I use Mendeley<\/a> , which is great to keep it organized, synced and perform search many articles.<\/p>To sync the code over all my computer, I use git<\/a> (it requires a bit a training; see the tutorial<\/a>).<\/p>References books <\/span><\/p>My favorite reference book on general optics is “Fundamental of Photonic<\/a>s” by Saleh & Teich. It is mush easier to read and up-to-date than the famous “Principle of Optics<\/a>” by Born & Wolf, which I find cumbersome to read in sometimes needlessly obfuscated. For general understanding of optics, “Optics<\/a>” by E. \u00a0Heicht is cool. For general electromagnetism, “Classical Electrodynamics<\/a>” dy J. D. Jackson is the reference, but I really don’t like it. You’d rather read “Electricity and Electromagnetism<\/a>” by E.M Purcell.\u00a0If you speak French, and want to go further, reading “Electromagn\u00e9tisme et relativit\u00e9” \u00a0J.-M. Raimond\u00a0ENS course is a good idea (available free here<\/a>).<\/p>For Lasers and gaussian optics, Siegman’s “Laser<\/a>” is the reference. Very intereting information on lasers can be read on Sam’s Laser FAQ<\/a>.
\nFor Extreme UV and Soft X-Rays, “Soft X-Rays and Extreme Ultraviolet Radiation”<\/a> by David Attwood is very interesting.<\/p>For optical engineering and technique, “Optical Shop testing<\/a>” by D. Malacara (pdf here<\/a>) and “Handbook of Optical Design<\/a>” by the same (pdf here<\/a>) are good reads.
\nConcerning photolithography, the best book I’ve read so far is Chris Mack’s “Fundamental Principles of Optical Lithography<\/a>“.<\/p>Joseph Goodman’s “Introduction to Fourier Optics<\/a>” and “Statistical Optics<\/a>” are two excellent books that I believe everybody should read !<\/p>Numerical simulations<\/span><\/p>The best book I’ve found on Fourier Optics numerical simulation is “Computational Fourier Optics<\/a>” by D. Voeltz. It is far better than another one my colleagues refer to, “Numerical Simulation of Optical Wave Propagation<\/a>”\u00a0 by JD Schmidt. I found an interesting discussion on\u00a0Nerd’s Rage<\/a> blog (especially\u00a0the article about on scalar diffraction<\/a>)<\/p>For Ab-Initio (exact, FDTD) simulations, you can\u00a0learn how to use<\/a> the free, open-source software\u00a0MEEP<\/a>. It has been developed, among others, by\u00a0Steven G. Johnson<\/a>, the same guy who implemented\u00a0FFTW<\/a> (Fastest Fourier Transform in the West), used by Matlab to perform FFTs.\u00a0Since it is working with \u00a0Linux, and you may use Windows as you your primary OS, I recommend you to use the free\u00a0VirtualBox<\/a> to create a\u00a0Ubuntu<\/a> virtual machine , and then install meep with a simple “sudo apt-get install meep” (I had some issues with hdf5, you might have the same, but they can be solved:)<\/p>For optical engineering, you may want to learn how to use Zemax, using the manual which comprise a very good tutorial (it can be found here<\/a> for example).<\/p>(If for some reason you cannot buy a book, you may want to check on freebookspot<\/a> or eknigu<\/a> if they’re available;-)<\/p>I’ll try to get that list updated !<\/em><\/p>engineer guidelines ;steps of a projects (computers, dessins bureau)<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometimes, when trying something new in optics, it is very hard to know where to begin, and find knowledgeable source. I want to share a small collection of resources that I had found immensely useful. “Basic Lab Skills” by Steve Cundiff (pdf) is a short must-read for every experimental optician. “Rule of thumb in Opto-Mechanics” […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,14,16,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-projects","category-resources","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/antoine.wojdyla.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/antoine.wojdyla.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/antoine.wojdyla.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/antoine.wojdyla.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/antoine.wojdyla.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=674"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"http:\/\/antoine.wojdyla.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1006,"href":"http:\/\/antoine.wojdyla.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674\/revisions\/1006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/antoine.wojdyla.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/antoine.wojdyla.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/antoine.wojdyla.fr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}