Cylindrical Lens

Cylindrical Lens are ideal for one-dimensional magnification applications. The effect of the mirror on the incident light in two directions is symmetric, while the cylindrical mirror has only one effect on the incident light. A typical application is to use a pair of cylindrical lenses to achieve beam shaping. A pair of positive cylindrical mirrors can be used to collimate and circularize the output of the laser diode. Another possible application is to use a single cylindrical lens to focus the divergent beam onto the detector array. In order to minimize spherical aberration, the collimated light source should be incident from the curved surface of the lens when the beam is focused into a line, and the linear light source should be incident from the plane of the lens when the linear light source is to be collimated.