collimator
Sign in to saveAlso known as beam limiting device
thumb|300px|Example of a particle collimator A collimator is a device which narrows a beam of particles or waves. “To narrow” can mean either to cause the directions of motion to become more aligned in a specific direction (i.e., make collimated light or parallel rays), or to cause the spatial cross section of the beam to become smaller (beam limiting device).
~8 min read
Encyclopedic overview
9 sectionsContents
- History
- Optical collimators
- X-ray, gamma ray, and neutron collimators
- Applications
- Limitations
- In radiation therapy
- Computing the spatial resolution
- See also
- References
thumb|300px|Example of a particle collimator A collimator is a device which narrows a beam of particles or waves. “To narrow” can mean either to cause the directions of motion to become more aligned in a specific direction (i.e., make collimated light or parallel rays), or to cause the spatial cross section of the beam to become smaller (beam limiting device).
==History== The English physicist Henry Kater was the inventor of the floating collimator, which rendered a great service to practical astronomy. He reported about his invention in January 1825. In his report, Kater mentioned previous work in this area by Carl Friedrich Gauss and Friedrich Bessel.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “collimator” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.