Biophotonics

Geometric Optics

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Geometric Optics
• Geometric optics treats light as a ray (consisting of
corpuscles) which obeys certain laws at interfaces
between two different materials.

• The following lecture introduces the geometric optics

analysis of light

• Keywords: Geometric optics, ray theory, basic optical

components

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Overview
• In this lecture you will learn,
• A historical perspective of optics
• Reflection and refraction
• Total internal reflection
• Planar and spherical optical elements
• Matrix method to analyze optical systems
• Some lens systems

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Early Days of Optics
• Mirrors dating back to 2000 BC
– Pyramid of Sesostris Egypt
– Polished metal
– Metal on glass, alloys
• Burning glass (lens for focusing)
– Mentioned in Aristophanes 424 BC
• Refraction studies
– Plato’s Republic (380 BC)
– Ptolemy (100 AD)
• Straight line propagation of light, which is empirically
observed, would imply “rays” of light (particle model)
travelling obeying some laws. Hero of Alexandria (~ 40
AD) postulated shortest distance path for light rays

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Early Days of Optics
• Roger Bacon (1215 – 1294) suggested using lenses for
correcting eyesight
– Concepts of refraction appreciated
– Focusing (or bending of light) in curved surfaces
• Tinkering with these lenses results in
– Lippershey invents refracting telescope (1608)
– Janssen invents compound microscope
– Kepler discovers small angle law of refraction (1611)
• Refracted angle is proportional to incident angle
– Snell discovers law of refraction (1621)
– Descartes puts it in terms of sine function (1637)
– Fermat proposed law of least time (shortest optical path) (1637)
• In essence a restatement of Hero’s postulate but with the
concept of refractive index
– Refractive index of a material identified as its capacity to bend light
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Early Days of Optics
• Application of law of refraction leads to the design (and
improvement) of several optical components like lenses,
microscopes, telescopes etc.

• In addition calculus developed around 1700’s to enable

studies of curvilinear surfaces like spherical lenses,
parabolic mirrors etc

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Reflection and Shortest Optical Path
• Law of reflection P’
– Any point P has a conjugate point P’
O
– Q is the point of observation
– We can view the light ray as emerging from
the conjugate point P’ Q
N
– Shortest path is P’Q P
– From the geometry < PON = < NOQ
– i.e., incident and reflected angles are same

• Reflection will be symmetric with

respect to normal

• Note that we derive this result using the

shortest path hypothesis
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Refraction
• Empirical observation that light
bends when moving between
different media, e.g. glass

• This means that speed of light in

the two media have to be
different (why?)

• Law of refraction
– Minimize d1 secθ1 + d 2 secθ 2
v1 v2

– Subject to constraint  v1x   v2 x 

d1   + d 2   = const.
v  v 
 1y   2y 
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Refraction
• Minimizing the expression under the constraint given in
the previous slide provides the famous law of refraction.
It is left as an exercise for the more mathematically
inclined readers to show this.
Medium 2, v2 Q

θ2 d1
O
Medium 1, v1
θ1 d2
P N

sin θ1 sin θ 2
=
v1 v2

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Refractive Index and Speed of Light
• From the observation of light refracting through a glass
slab, one can conclude that light speed in glass must be
lower than the light speed in air to explain the shortest
path hypothesis in the context of the observed light path

c
• We define v = n1v1 = n2v2 = c
n

– We will see later that this c is a universal speed of light

• Using snell’s law and the definition above we can show

that rays bend towards normal when going from a rarer
medium to a denser medium and away from the normal
when going from denser to rarer. Denser and rarer refer to
refractive index being higher and lower respectively
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Total Internal Reflection

• Rays bend towards normal when

going from a rarer medium to a
denser medium and away from Q
Medium 2, n2
the normal when going from
θ2 d1
denser to rarer O
Medium 1, n1
d2
θ1
• This implies that when light P N
travels from denser to a rarer
n1 > n2
medium it will get reflected
beyond a critical angle
 n2 
θ c = sin −1  
 n1 

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Total Internal Reflection

• This phenomenon is called total

internal reflection
Medium 2, n2 Q
• TIR results in natural phenomena θ2 d1
O
such as mirage. TIR is also the
Medium 1, n1
basic concept behind optical θ1 d2
fibers and is also exploited in P N
certain imaging and molecular n1 > n2
sensing techniques to be
discussed later  n2 
θ c = sin  −1

 n1 

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Recap
• Law of reflection and refraction follow from the postulate
that light rays travel in the path that minimizes time of
flight

• Alternately, minimize the ‘Optical path length’ where OPL

=
∫nds
path

OPL = ref. index multipled by geometric path length

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Recap
• Refractive index is related to speed of light in the
medium as
c
v =
n

• All of geometric optics can be analyzed by applying the

laws of reflection and refraction at the boundaries
(interfaces) of the objects which may be comprised of
various geometrical shapes such as a parabolic mirror or a
spherical lens

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Non-Planar Reflectors
y

y = ax2
f = 1/ 4a x

• Parabolic mirrors: Using the law of reflection at various

points where the incident light ray strikes the parabolic
surface, one can show that all rays will go through the
focus shown in the diagram. So the parabolic surface acts
as a perfect focusing mirror

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Spherical Mirrors
• However, spherical
mirrors are easier to
manufacture. In the
paraxial regime a spherical
mirror can be assumed to R/2
have a focus of f = R/2. C F
si
Paraxial approximation so
considers only rays that
are very close to the
normal, i.e. small angles
where sinθ = θ

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Mirror Equation
• Using the geometrical
construction shown in the
diagram, tt can be shown
that
1 1 2
+ = C F
R/2
so si R si
so

• This is the mirror equation

(Gauss)

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Finite Objects: Magnification
• It can be shown that image
magnification is given by,

R
M =−
R + 2 so
C F
• Ray Diagrams si
so
• Virtual image from convex mirrors
• Use ray diagrams

• Sign convention:
• Convex: f is negative
• Concave: f is positive
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Matrix Method for Geometric Optics Analysis
• Optical systems with several components are easily
analyzed by a matrix method. Here, a ray is
characterized by the position and the direction as shown
in the diagram.

• Transmission through any component is

described by a matrix multiplication as follows

 y 2   M 11 M 12  y1  θ
  =   
 θ 2   M 21 M 22  θ1  y

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Matrix Method for Geometric Optics Analysis
• Transmission through a number of components, e.g a
lens with focal length f1, free space passage through
distance d1, reflection at a mirror followed by free space
passage through distance d2 and finally transmission
through a lens with focal length f2 can be analyzed by
simply multiplying the appropriate matrices in the right
order. For the train of optical elements given below, the
equivalent matrix will be

1 2 n-1 n

Mnet = Mn*Mn-1*....*M2*M1
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Some Matrix Representations
• Consider translation in free space through distance d,
• Then y2 = y1+ d*θ1 and θ2 = θ1
• Therefore, the matrix representing translation will be
1 d 
M =  
0 1 

• Similarly the matrix representing plane reflection will be

1 0 
M =  
 0 − 1

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Spherical Refraction
• The matrix representing spherical
n2
refraction as shown in diagram can be
found using simple geometry to be, n1
n1

R/2
 1 0 C F
M =  n1 − n2 n1 
 
 n2 R n2  so

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Spherical Lenses
• Using the previous result for a t
single spherical interface
we can analyze the transmission
through a spherical lens as
shown in the diagram
R1 R2
• One has to multiply the matrix
for the spherical interface with
radius R2, followed by
translation through thickness t,
followed by spherical interface
with radius R1

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Spherical Lens: Focal length
• Assuming refractive index to be same on both sides of
the lens, one can show that the equivalent matrix for the
lens is  1 0 where, 1  1 1
M =  −1 1  = (n − 1) − 
  f  R2 R1 
 f 

• This result is for t = 0 or thin lens

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Focusing by Thin Lens
• A consequence of our definition of f in the previous slide
is that f > 0 for bi-convex or plano-convex lenses and f < 0
for bi-concave or plano-concave lenses.

• Using the matrix derived in the previous slide, it is

straightforward to show that a lens will focus all parallel
rays to a single point at a distance f from the center of
the lens. Therefore, f in the previous slide is the focal
length of the lens.

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Diffraction Limit
• According to geometric optics all parallel rays are
focused on to a single point. But later on we will see that
the wave nature of light implies that this is not possible.
There is a limit of how much one can focus light. This
limit is called the diffraction limit.

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Lens Equation
• Applying the transformation matrix  1 0
M =  −1 1 
 
 f 

for a lens to the set of rays from P we get,

y’ = (1 – v/f)y + {u(1 – v/f) + v}θ and

θ’ = -y/f + (1 – u/f)θ

P P’

u v

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Lens Equation
• If point P is to be imaged on to point P’ all rays passing
through the lens must pass through P’ irrespective of θ.
This means y’ must be independent of q. By rearranging
the coefficient of q in the equation for y’, we get the
famous lens equation that links the object and image
distance with the focal length of the lens
1/f = 1/u + 1/v

P P’

u v

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Lens Magnification
Also, we see that, image magnification = M = y’/y = -v/u.
By appropriate choice of f and u, one can create single
lens object magnifiers which are the basic stepping
stones to optical microscopy.

P P’

u v

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Lens Systems
• Using the transformation matrix for lens derived in this
lecture, one can analyze lens systems consisting of
multiple lenses (convex or concave) with different focal
distances.

• Modern microscope lenses consists of several lenses

arranged to compensate for image aberrations such as
spherical aberration where rays striking at different
distances from the lens axis (called the optical axis) focus
at different points (due to the error in approximating a
spherical surface with a parabolic surface); or chromatic
aberration where light with different wavelengths (color)
gets focused at slightly different focal points.

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Summary
• As we saw in this lecture, geometric optics is the simple
application of laws of reflection and refraction and the
behavior of an optical component is a function of its
geometry (e.g. focusing of rays by a parabolic surface.

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