What is a Cylinder lens?

A cylinder lens (cylindrical lens) is a lens shaped like a cylinder. It has a semi-cylindrical shape with a part of the side surface of the cylinder cut off. When the incident surface of a lens is divided into two components, the x-axis and the y-axis, only one axis has a curvature that acts as a lens, and the other axis has no curvature and acts only as a window. Therefore, only one direction of the image is scaled up / down. This is used to change the magnification of the image in only one direction.

Application of Cylinder lens

Applications for converting laser light onto a line (laser line generator), applications for condensing light on a slit opening or on a line sensor, and shaping an elliptical beam of a semiconductor laser with different spread angles in two orthogonal directions into a circle. It is used for the purpose of obtaining (colimating) parallel light bundles.

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