errors in optics

[RichD]

I'm not an optician, but occasionally drop in to optics
seminars. Something strikes me as odd, time and again.

When presenting their lab bench experiments, they seldom
mention errors or approximations, Every beam splitter
is exactly 50-50, every mirror is exactly 30*, etc.

In electric circuits, error and noise are inherent,
cannot be neglected. Is it really possible to play this way,
in an optics lab?

--
Rich

[Phil Hobbs]

Post by RichD
I'm not an optician, but occasionally drop in to optics
seminars. Something strikes me as odd, time and again.
When presenting their lab bench experiments, they seldom
mention errors or approximations, Every beam splitter
is exactly 50-50, every mirror is exactly 30*, etc.
In electric circuits, error and noise are inherent,
cannot be neglected. Is it really possible to play this way,
in an optics lab?
--
Rich

Depends. There are a lot of poorly-controlled variables in an optical
system, due especially to etalon fringes, and things like beam splitting
ratios depend on angles of incidence, polarization, and so on.

There aren't a lot of 1% tolerances in optics.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs