Optics Articles on StarkEffects.com

Optics & Optical Physics is such a huge subject that it could occupy an entire career and then some. (Oh, I just realized, it has been my whole career!) Lasers, remote sensing, visualizing radiation in invisible wavelengths, seeing the very far, seeing the very small, communications through glass fibers, enhancing awareness... Optics is the mode we use to understand our world. Articles linked from this page will range widely and wildly but will all have optics in common.

Zernike Polynomials

Zernike Polynomials used for representation of light beam wavefronts. Represent any 2-D surface as long as it has a circular footprint.

Mathcad file for Zernike Polynomials

Zernike Polynomials MathCAD sheet, in mathcad 2001i format. (Right Click and Select Save File to Download). This sheet calculates the zernike polynomial of your choice and displays a 3D graph. (Requires mathcad from mathsoft)

Laser Beam Propagation

Basics of Laser Beam Propagation. Here are some of the formulas and descriptions of wave phenomena in coherent beams. This is a work in progress, so please have patience, but go ahead and tell me if you see something wrong!

Stark Effect

The Stark Effect is shown here in the splitting and shifting of spectral lines in hydrogen under the influence of an external electric field.

What is the Stark Effect? This article discusses the spectroscopic effect of strong electric fields known as the Stark effect, named for Johannes Stark, the first to experimentally demonstrate the effect.