Prism
An optical prism is a transparent optical element with flat, polished surfaces that are designed to refract light. At least one surface must be angled — elements with two parallel surfaces are "not" prisms. The traditional geometrical shape of an optical prism is that of a triangular prism with a triangular base and rectangular sides, and in colloquial use "prism" usually refers to this type. Some types of optical prism are not in fact in the shape of geometric prisms. Prisms can be made from any material that is transparent to the wavelengths for which they are designed. Typical materials  include glass, acrylic and fluorite. A dispersive prism can be used to break white light up into its constituent spectral colors (the colors of the rainbow) as described in the following section. Other types of prisms noted below can be used to reflect light, or to split light into components with different polarizations. Types. Dispersive. "Dispersive prisms" are used to break up light into its constituent spectral colors because the refractive index depends on frequency; the white light entering the prism is a mixture of different frequencies, each of which gets bent slightly differently. Blue light is slowed more than  red light and will therefore be bent more than red light. Spectral dispersion is the best known property of optical prisms, although not the most frequent purpose of using optical prisms in practice. Reflective. "Reflective prisms" are used to reflect light, in order to flip, invert, rotate, deviate or displace the light beam. They are typically used to erect the image in binoculars or single-lens reflex cameras – without the prisms the image would be upside down for the user. Being usually made of pure optical glass, reflective prisms use total internal reflection to achieve near-perfect reflectivity on their  facets that light impinges under high-enough oblique angle. In combination with anti-reflective coating of input and output facets, this leads to an order of magnitude lower light loss than usual metallic mirrors have. Beam-splitting. Various thin-film optical layers can be deposited on the hypotenuse of one right-angled prism, and cemented to another prism to form a beam-splitter cube. Overall optical performance of such a cube is determined by the thin layer. In comparison with a usual glass substrate, the glass cube provides protection of the thin-film layer from both sides and better mechanical  stability. The cube can also eliminate etalon effects, back-side reflection and slight beam deflection. Polarizing. Another class is formed by "polarizing prisms" which use birefringence to split a beam of light into components of varying polarization. In the visible and UV regions, they have very low losses and their extinction ratio typically exceeds formula_1, which is superior to other types of polarizers. They may or may not employ total internal reflection; These are typically made of a birefringent crystalline material like calcite, but other materials like quartz and α-BBO may be necessary for UV applications, an other (, and  ) will extend transmission farther into the infrared spectral range. Depolarizer. Birefringent crystals can be also assembled in a way that leads to apparent depolarization of the light. Note that depolarization would not be observed for an ideal monochromatic plane wave, as actually both devices turn reduced temporal coherence or spatial coherence, respectively, of the beam into decoherence of its polarization components. Others. However, prisms made of isotropic materials like glass will also alter polarization of light, as partial reflection under oblique angles does not maintain the amplitude ratio (nor phase) of the s- and p-polarized components of the light , leading to general elliptical polarization. This is generally an unwanted effect of dispersive prisms. In some cases this can be avoided by choosing prism geometry which light enters and exits under perpendicular angle, by compensation through non-planar light trajectory, or by use of p-polarized light. Total internal reflection alters only the mutual phase between s- and p-polarized light. Under well chosen angle of incidence, this phase is close to formula_2. Uses. Total internal reflection in prisms finds numerous uses through optics, plasmonics and microscopy. In particular: Other uses of prisms are based on their beam-deviating refraction : In optometry. By shifting corrective lenses off axis, images seen through them can be displaced in the same way that a prism displaces images. Eye care professionals use prisms, as well as lenses off axis, to treat various orthoptics problems: Prism spectacles with a single prism perform a relative displacement of the two eyes, thereby correcting eso-, exo, hyper- or hypotropia. In contrast, spectacles with prisms of equal power for both eyes, called yoked prisms (also: "conjugate prisms", "ambient lenses" or "performance glasses") shift the visual field of both eyes to the same extent.