Interaction of X-rays with photographic emulsions

A model of an X-ray passing through a photographic emulsion.

Photographic emulsions (or plates) are used as detectors across the optical spectrum. High spatial resolution and sensitivity over several orders of magnitude of flux often make them the detector of choice is numerous industrial, medical or precision physics applications. However, the interaction is non-linear, and there is usually large uncertainty over any estimated intensity values for incident flux. Often, these concerns are unnecessary in the sense that a careful consideration of theory can determine the photographic response function and the associated statistic to good accuracy. This is one of our directions of investigation in the Optics Group.

It is closely linked to corresponding experimental investigations: