Improve system performance by understanding &
planning for the interesting phenomena that occur
in the three regions of an optical system.  

Optical Engineering is the activity of understanding and developing designs using the interesting phenomena that occur in the three regions of an optical system. The three regions are: (a) the light source (or “emitter”), (b) the light sensor (or “detector”) and (c) the space (or “interaction region”) between the source and the detector.

"Understanding" in this case means researching, analyzing, and experimenting to learn as much as possible about the phenomena that are occurring.

"Developing designs" works from system requirements and either refines a current approach or creates new approaches that meet requirements. During the design process there are many trade-offs that may need to be made among the requirements in all three regions of the optical system.  

“Interesting phenomena” can mean any of a wide range of occurrences, from the familiar to the bizarre.  Possible sources include stars, lasers, light bulb filaments, LEDs, fluorescent biological tissue samples.  Possible sensors include cameras, photovoltaic cells, projection screens, human eyes.  Depending on the purpose of the system, the space between source and sensor can contain active or passive optical components such as lenses, mirrors, filters & gratings, gas, fluid or solid test samples, higher-level components such as scanners or modulators or diffusers.  All of these – and many more – will continue to keep optical engineers busy as long as there are ways to put light to use.

Why do we do optical engineering?  Because it’s how useful optical instruments and products are developed and improved.

Optical Engineering at ASE Optics

At ASE our approach to optical engineering is driven by the needs of our customer. Your needs may include:

• Improving or optimizing a current system
• Developing requirements for a new system
• Developing an initial approach
• Designing individual components
• Choosing off-the-shelf components
• Designing an entire system from source to detector
• Improving manufacturability of a current system
• Building and testing components or a complete system

Our expertise covers all aspects of optical engineering including lens design, beam propagation, polarization analysis, stray light analysis, opto-mechanical engineering, tolerancing, system engineering, opto-electronics, image analysis, metrology, and control-systems engineering.

Bring us your optical problems and we will provide you with the right optical solution.