Collimated light

Collimated light is light whose rays are parallel, and therefore will spread minimally as it propagates. A perfectly collimated beam, with no divergence, would not disperse with distance. Such a beam cannot be created, due to diffraction. Light can be approximately collimated by a number of processes, for instance by means of a collimator. Perfectly collimated light is sometimes said to be focused at infinity. Thus as the distance from a point source increases, the spherical wavefronts become flatter and closer to plane waves, which are perfectly collimated.