List of refractive indices

Many materials have a well-characterized refractive index, but these indices depend strongly upon the frequency of light. Standard refractive index measurements are taken at yellow sodium D line, 589 nanometres.

There are also weaker dependencies on temperature, pressure/stress, et cetera, as well on precise material compositions (presence of dopants et cetera); for many materials and typical conditions, however, these variations are at the percent level or less. Thus, it is especially important to cite the source for an index measurement if precision is required.

In general, an index of refraction is a complex number with both a real and imaginary part, where the latter indicates the strength of absorption loss at a particular wavelength—thus, the imaginary part is sometimes called the extinction coefficient $k$. Such losses become particularly significant, for example, in metals at short (e.g. visible) wavelengths, and must be included in any description of the refractive index.

References

ee also

*Sellmeier equation
*Corrective lens#Ophthalmic material property tables
*Optical properties of water and ice

External links

* [http://www.iapws.org/relguide/rindex.pdf International Association for the Properties of Water and Steam]
* [http://people.bu.edu/efs/Educational%20resources/n%20and%20k%20of%20materials.pdf Filmetrics Corporation of San Diego, California, 2002]
* [http://www.ioffe.ru/SVA/NSM/nk/index.html Ioffe institute, Russian Federation]
* [http://www.crystran.co.uk/index.htm Crystran, United Kingdom]
* [http://www.astro.uni-jena.de/Laboratory/Database/jpdoc/f-dbase.html Jena University, Germany]
* [http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/tables/indrf.html#c1 Hyperphysics list of refractive indices]
* [http://www.luxpop.com/ Luxpop: Index of refraction values and photonics calculations]