Collimating

Collimated light is light whose rays are parallel, and therefore will spread minimally as it propagates. A perfectly collimated beam, with no divergence, would not disperse with distance. Such a beam cannot be created, due to diffraction.

Light can be approximately collimated by a number of processes, for instance by means of a collimator. Perfectly collimated light is sometimes said to be focused at infinity. Thus, as the distance from a point source increases, the spherical wavefronts become flatter and closer to plane waves, which are perfectly collimated.

The word "collimate" comes from the Latin verb collimare, which originated in a misreading of collineare, "to direct in a straight line".

Laser light from gas or crystal lasers is highly collimated because it is formed in an optical cavity between two parallel mirrors which constrain the light to a path perpendicular to the surfaces of the mirrors. In practice, gas lasers can use concave mirrors, flat mirrors, or a combination of both. The divergence of high-quality laser beams is commonly less than 1 milliradian, and can be much less for large-diameter beams. Laser diodes emit less-collimated light due to their short cavity, and therefore higher collimation requires a collimating lens.

Synchrotron light is very well collimated. It is produced by bending relativistic electrons (i.e. those moving at relativistic speeds) around a circular track. When the electrons are at relativistic speeds, the resulting radiation is highly collimated, a result which does not occur at slower speeds.

The light from stars (other than the Sun) can be considered collimated for almost any purpose, because they are so far away they have almost no angular size. Light from the Sun is nearly collimated by the time it reaches Earth because of its distance from the Earth.

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