Instructional Videos

All videos are captioned for universal accessibility

High definition videos succinctly show how to perform various laboratory tasks.  Designed to get the novice research student up-to-speed and proficient in the optics laboratory as quickly as possible.

Video Topics

  1. •How to clean optics

  2. •Mounting optics

  3. •Setting the beam height

  4. •Aligning with steering mirrors

  5. •Mounting mirrors on piezos

  6. •Estimating a lens’ focal length

  7. •Working with invisible beams

  8. •Retroreflecting light

  9. •Aligning a pinhole spatial filter

  10. •Coupling into a single mode fiber

  11. •Mode Matching

  12. •Aligning an Extended Cavity Diode Laser

  13. •Photodiode basics

  14. •Oscilloscope basics

  15. •Measuring power

  16. •Characterizing the polarization of a beam

  17. •Measuring Gaussian beam parameters

  18. •Balanced detection

  19. •Modulation/demodulation techniques

  20. •The Michelson interferometer

  21. •The Twyman-Green interferometer

  22. •Fabry-Perot cavities