Edmund Optics^®

Trimming the Fat: Truncating Lenses to Shrink Systems

Mounting flat mirrors by their edges in a kinematic mount imparts stress onto the mirror surface. This results in distortion and reduced quality of the reflected wavefront, which is especially noticeable when using high-quality mirrors. Stemmed mirrors, on the other hand, are mounted from a smaller diameter “stem” protruding from the back of the mirror, resulting in significantly reduced stress on the mirror surface, high stability, and cost reduction and can be used as a replacement for a more expensive and complex kinematic mount and a conventional mirror.

Seeing around corners is no longer science fiction thanks to ultrafast lasers and sensitive cameras