Basics of Optical Alignment

Optical alignment determines how efficiently light moves through the microscope and how faithfully the optical train produces the intended illumination and detection geometry. Small errors in beam height, beam angle, collimation, or optic centering can reduce throughput, introduce aberrations, make the field less uniform, and lower the signal-to-background ratio. Those errors also tend to compound as additional mirrors, lenses, scanners, and objectives are added.

The tutorials in this section are intended to make common alignment operations more explicit and repeatable. Each tutorial will state the goal of the alignment step, explain why the measurement works, and give a protocol that can be used at the optical table.

Note

This section is in development. We are starting with a back-reflection tutorial and plan to add additional alignment tutorials as the documentation grows. Please submit requests for new tutorials as GitHub feature requests.

Available Tutorials

• Back-Reflection Alignment

Tentative Tutorial Roadmap

Future tutorials may include:

• Setting up an alignment laser.

• Walking a beam.

• Collimating a beam.

• Finding the focus of a beam.