Prisms and beam splitters

Beam splitters and prisms are not only found in a wide variety of common optical instruments, such as cameras, binoculars, microscopes, telescopes, periscopes, range finders, and surveying equipment, but also in many sophisticated scientific instruments including interferometers, spectrophotometers, and fluorimeters.

Prisms and beam splitters are essential components that bend, split, reflect, and fold light through the pathways of both simple and sophisticated optical systems. Cut and ground to specific tolerances and exact angles, prisms are polished blocks of glass or other transparent materials that can be employed to deflect or deviate a light beam, rotate or invert an image, separate polarisation states, or disperse light into its component wavelengths. Many prism designs can perform more than one function, which often includes changing the line of sight and simultaneously shortening the optical path, thus reducing the size of optical instruments.