Introduction to Optical Metrology

1	Introduction to Optics

1.1    INTRODUCTION

Metrology is the science and technology of making measurements and drawing significant conclusions from a set of data. Optical metrology uses light-based techniques for measurement. The majority of measurements involve length in one form or other and hence most of the techniques reported in this book will relate to length measurement. Besides, there are some physical parameters of direct relevance in optics and hence the techniques of measurement of these parameters will also be included in the text.

Length is expressed in meters. Prior to 1889, the meter was defined as 1/10,000,000 the distance between the North Pole and the equator along the line of longitude passing through Paris, France. A ...