What is Collimator?
A collimator is a device that is used to narrow a beam of particles or waves by blocking peripheral rays and only allowing the focused beam to pass through. It has many uses across different fields:
- In optics, a collimator can collimate light, x-rays or gamma rays into a narrow beam. This allows the beam to travel long distances without spreading out.
- In radiotherapy, medical linear accelerators use collimators to shape the radiation beam that is delivered to the patient. This focuses the radiation on the tumor while minimizing exposure to healthy tissue.
- In physics research, collimators filter out unwanted peripheral particles from an particle accelerator beam. This ensures only the particles of interest are analyzed.
- Collimated light beams are used in microscopes, telescopes, sights and lasers to enhance image quality, brightness and range.
Overall a collimator helps control the size, shape and direction of a beam. Proper collimation leads to higher precision and resolution in various scientific instruments and processes.
Mathematica, Simulink, MATLAB, GnuPlot, Scilab, GNU Octave, SageMath, OpenModelica, fxSolver, JModelica, Xcos, Julia are some alternatives to Collimator.