Resources for Physics 4150

General resources on the Web

• Melles Griot Fundamental Optics.pdf   Concise, readable, but relatively complete guide to basic optics as it pertains to lenses, prisms, wave plates, and etalons.
• LaserFest   Website commemorating the 50^th anniversary of the laser, with much information on lasers and their history.
• Optics on the web   A large collection of links to optics education and reference sites, some useful, some fascinating, others neither.
• Polariscopes and gemology An illustrated guide to how polariscopes can be used to determine crystal symmetries and properties.

Lecture notes and course-specific information

• camera.pdf camera_sensor.pdf   Detailed data on the Point Grey Firefly MV video camera (USB or Firewire), and the sensor it uses.
• Resolution target notes.pdf Notes on USAF 1951 and microscopy test charts, from www.efg2.com.
• Gaussian_beams.pdf    Detailed lecture notes on the properties of diffraction-limited Gaussian laser beams.

Optics-oriented Calculator

• Topticalc.zip   Small calculator program with several very useful calculation and conversion panes for optics, from Toptica Photonics AG.
  
  

Ray tracing with OSLO-EDU

• OSLO662_EDU_Installer.exe, OSLO Optics Reference.pdf, OSLO User Guide.pdf   Free educational version of the OSLO ray tracing and optical design program for Windows, and the extensive text book and user's manual that accompany it.

Nonlinear least-squares fitting

It’s quite possible to do generalized least-squares fitting with Mathematica, Matlab, or Mathcad, and links to a few examples and tutorials are provided below. However, there are also several free or inexpensive programs specifically intended to fit x-y data to lineshape functions such as Gaussians and Lorentzians. The first link below is to one such program that’s very easy to learn and works well. It is installed on each of the computers in the P4150 lab room, as is Mathematica Version 10.

• http://fityk.nieto.pl/ Web page for Fityk, a small program that works nicely for fitting Gaussian peaks and, when necessary, baseline offsets. It’s best to provide the input data in a text or “csv” file. The program is free in versions up to 0.9.8.
• tutorial.mcd tutorial.pdf   Tutorial on using Mathcad to analyze Physics laboratory experiments.
• Gaussfit.mcd Mathcad_Gaussfit.pdf Generalized least-squares fit to a Gaussian peak using Mathcad.
• Fitting Data to Nonlinear Models Online documentation for the FindFit[] function in Mathematica.