Cylindrical Lenses
Cylindrical lenses are used to condense, focus or expand light in a single dimension. Typical applications include laser scanners, holography, optical information processing/computing, spectroscopy, dye lasers, and scanning confocal microscopy. Cylindrical lenses are more challenging to manufacture than flat or spherical optics, which is why we employ best-in-class polishing techniques and exacting metrology to make every lens. We offer catalog, semi-custom, and fully customized lenses to take you from proof of concept through to volume manufacturing or final data, available with any of our high durability, low loss AR coatings.
Used to condense light in one dimension only. Positive cylindrical lenses can focus input collimated light to a line, transform a point of light to a line image or change the aspect ratio of an image. Useful for laser line focusing, laser projection, anamorphic beam shaping, and illumination of slit and line detector arrays.
Used to expand light in one dimension only. Negative cylindrical lenses diverge input collimated light away from a line. Useful for laser line generation, anamorphic beam shaping, and one-dimensional compression of images.