A dichroic prism is a prism that splits light into two beams of differing wavelength (colour). They are usually constructed of one or more glass prisms with dichroic optical coatings that selectively reflect or transmit light depending on the light's wavelength. That is, certain surfaces within the prism act as dichroic filters. These are used as beam splitters in many optical instruments. (See dichroism for the etymology of the term.)

One common application of dichroic prisms is in some camcorders and high-quality digital cameras. A trichroic prism assembly is a combination of two dichroic prisms which are used to split an image into red, green and blue components so they can be separately detected on three CCD arrays.

A trichroic prism assembly

A typical layout for the device is shown in the diagram. A light beam enters the first prism (A) and the blue component of the beam is reflected from a high-pass filter coating (F1) that reflects blue light (high-frequency), but transmits longer wavelengths (lower frequencies). The blue beam undergoes total internal reflection from the front of prism A and exits it through a side face. The remainder of the beam enters the second prism (B) and is split by a second filter coating (F2) that reflects red light but transmits shorter wavelengths. The red beam is also totally internally reflected due to a small air-gap between prisms A and B. The remaining green component of the beam travels through prism C.

The trichroic prism assembly can be used in reverse to combine red, green and blue beams into a coloured image, and is used in this way in some projector devices.

See also

* Thin-film optics

Prism