Cylindrical lens : a complete guide

Cylindrical lenses are less common than spherical lenses, but are still wide spread in many Photonics applications, below you&#;ll find a complete guide to let you learn more about it:

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What is a cylindrical lens ?

A cylindrical lens is a lens with at least one optical surface has the shape of a section of a cylinder. While spherical lenses surfaces are defined from a fix center of curvature and a radius, cylinder lens shape are made along a central axis with a fix radius of curvature.

Illustration of a convex and a concave cylindrical lens.

What are the types of cylindrical lens ?

Like other lenses a cylindrical lens is defined from the shape of it&#;s optical surfaces :

Cylindrical lens type Detail PCV &#; Plano-concave  lens one flat surface and a concave cylindrical surface.  Focus light on one line. PCX &#; Plano-convex cy one flat surface and a concave cylindrical surface. Expend the light in one direction. Biconvex both sides with convex cylindrical shape (can be of different radius of curvature) Biconcave both sides with concave cylindrical shape (can be of different radius of curvature) Doublet Achromatic cylindrical lens.

Lenses outer shape may be cut in round shape of square shape.

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What are the material used to make cylindrical lens ?

Most of the optical raw materials may be used are :

What are the usage of cylindrical lens ?

Cylindrical lenses are mainly used to focus a incident light signal into a one dimension line, below are the most commun applications :

• Laser scanning (when the scan signal should form a line)
• Vision quality control (concentrate the lighting on one dimension)
• Metrology
• Ophtalmology
• Defense
• Sensors
• Lighting

How is polished a cylindrical lens ?

Cylindrical polishing of a lens doesn&#;t require rotational polishing machines, but specific polishing  equipment working way and forth in one direction.

To guaranty a good surface aspect, polishing cylindrical lens use specific polishing toolings and polishing pads. See above an example of such a tool, you&#;ll notice that for cost saving, several cylindrical glass lenses are polish at the same time.

Optical device

Cylindrical lenses.

A cylindrical lens is a lens which focuses light into a line instead of a point as a spherical lens would. The curved face or faces of a cylindrical lens are sections of a cylinder, and focus the image passing through it into a line parallel to intersection of the surface of the lens and a plane tangent to it along the cylinder's axis. The lens converges or diverges the image in the direction perpendicular to this line, and leaves it unaltered in the direction parallel to its cylinder's axis (in the tangent plane).

A toric lens combines the effect of a cylindrical lens with that of an ordinary spherical lens.

The Cylindrical rod can magnify only those linear dimensions which are perpendicular to its axis, and cannot magnify linear dimensions which are parallel to its axis.

If a thin cylindrical rod is placed on a ruled white paper with the axis of the rod making an angle θ with the ruled lines, the lines will appear broken and tilted at some angle α as shown in the figure, the Refractive Index of the rod can be given as : [1]

Uses

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Uses in optometry

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• Cylindrical lenses are prescribed to correct astigmatism.[2]
• Cross cylinder, which is a combination of two cylindrical lenses with equal strength and opposite power, is used in subjective refraction to diagnose astigmatism, and assess the strength and axis of the astigmatic power etc.[3]
• Maddox rods, made up of cylindrical lenses arranged in parallel, are used to detect strabismus and diplopia.[4]

Other uses

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• In a light sheet microscope, a cylindrical lens is placed in front of the illumination objective to create the light sheet used for imaging.
• Cylindrical lenses are used in optical spectrometers.[5]
• Cylindrical lenses are used in holography.[6]
• Doublet cylinder lens system is used in optical coherence tomography.[7]
• Cylinder lenses are also used in many laser applications. A cylindrical lens can be used to create a laser line. A doublet cylinder lens is used to make laser sheets and circularize elliptical beams from laser diodes.[8]

See also

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References

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Other Sources

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Want more information on convex cylindrical lens? Feel free to contact us.

• Jacobs, Donald H. Fundamentals of Optical Engineering. MC Graw-Hill Book Co., .

• Cylindrical lenses at Wikimedia Commons