Retroreflectors

Retroreflectors(Corner Cube Prisms) are trihedral prisms manufactured from a solid piece of N-BK7 glass/UVFS. We offer retroreflectors as well as versions with antireflection (AR) coatings . They have uncoated reflective faces and rely on total internal reflection (TIR); we also offer backside-coated retroreflectors which employ second surface specular reflections which minimize changes in polarization to <10° with minimal introduced ellipticity.

Retroreflectors reflect an image or beam back toward its original direction via three reflections. The beam or image will be inverted and reflected through 180° even if the angle of incidence is not zero. The insensitivity of the alignment of these prisms make them ideal retroreflecting optics. For these retroreflecting prisms, the incident and reflected beams will be parallel to within 3 arcsec. However, unless the incident and reflected beams strike the exact center of the optic, they will not overlap but rather be shifted with respect to each other. For example, if the incident beam strikes the optic 3 mm to the right of center, the retroreflected beam will emerge 3 mm to the left of center.These retroreflectors are widely used for survey industry.