Photonics Dictionary

The holographic recording of sequences of high-speed phenomena. With a multiple beam laser, multiple holograms that depict rapid events can be formed on a single medium.

A high-speed motion camera, also known as a high-speed camera or slow-motion camera, is a specialized imaging device designed to capture fast-moving events or phenomena at extremely high frame rates....

A camera designed to record at rates exceeding 50 fps. For frame rates up to about 500 fps, an ordinary pull-down mechanism can be used. From 500 to 1000 fps, the film must be moved continuously, the...

Photography involving the recording of events that occur too fast to be perceived by the human eye or recorded by conventional photographic techniques. See high-speed movie camera; high-speed...

A method of producing x-ray exposures as short as 0.03 µs; the primary application is in ballistic radiography.

A shutter actuated by means other than mechanical springs for timings on the order of nanoseconds. The shutter is used in the photography of rapid moving objects or events.

A still camera with a shutter capable of opening for a time as short as a fraction of a microsecond. An electronically operated Kerr cell often is employed.

A camera that uses an image converter tube in such a way that voltage waveforms applied to internal electrodes cause the original image to be switched on and off very rapidly, thus offering time...

Photographic recording of rapid events at a rate exceeding 106 frames per second.

An APD detector, or avalanche photodiode detector, is a type of photodetector used to detect light or optical signals by converting incoming photons into electrical current. It operates based on the...

The use of a short-duration electron beam to record high-speed events that occur in microscopic objects made of materials that emit visible fluorescence during electron bombardment. The method is...

The high-speed electrons and positrons emitted by radioactive materials.

Camera Link HS (high speed) is a standard developed for high-speed digital data transmission in machine vision and industrial imaging applications. It is an evolution of the original Camera Link...

An instrument consisting of a high-voltage vacuum tube used to form hard x-rays or high-speed ion beams. By partitioning the tube into separate sections, the total voltage is divided.

An optical instrument used to track and image a test vehicle (target) throughout its flight. The cinesextant frequently includes multiple devices such as high-speed video and film cameras as well as...

CoaXPress (CoaXPress or CXP) is a standardized digital interface and communication protocol used primarily in machine vision and industrial imaging applications. It enables high-speed data...

Solar regions characterized by low density and open magnetic fields where high-speed solar wind streams originate. Originally believed to be "M'' regions, coronal holes are the precursors of the...

A detector array refers to a collection of individual detector elements arranged in a two-dimensional grid or matrix format. Each element within the array is capable of detecting electromagnetic...

Also called DLIP, a high-speed, high-resolution processing technique that uses high-power, pulsed laser systems to directly ablate micro- and nanoperiodic structures with different features on large...

Directed energy refers to a type of energy that is emitted and transferred in a controlled direction. The term is often associated with military and technological applications where energy, typically...

A type of asynchronous shutter device that is used particularly in CCD sensor applications to capture an image of a high-speed subject with no time delay. The word donpisha is taken from the Japanese...

An electro-optic modulator (EOM) is a device used to modulate the amplitude, phase, or polarization of light waves using an external electrical signal. Electro-optic modulation is a fundamental...

A high-speed shutter, similar to a Kerr cell, that uses the birefringence produced in a liquid during the passage of an electric current through it to change the liquid's optical transmission...

An EMCCD (electron-multiplying charge-coupled device) camera is a type of scientific camera specifically designed for low-light imaging applications that require high sensitivity and fast readout...

An event-based image sensor, also known as a dynamic vision sensor (DVS), is a type of digital imaging device designed to capture visual information in a highly efficient and unique way compared to...

A femtosecond laser is a type of laser that emits ultrashort pulses of light with durations on the order of femtoseconds, where one femtosecond is equal to 10-15 seconds. These lasers are capable of...

A fiber optic cable assembly refers to a complete unit consisting of optical fibers, connectors, protective jackets, and other components that are assembled together to facilitate the transmission of...

A fiber optic transceiver, often simply referred to as an "optical transceiver," is a device used in fiber optic communications to transmit and receive data over optical fibers. It integrates both a...

A high-speed cine camera that produces discrete frames of a continuous event as opposed to the flow photographic record of a streak camera.

Free-space optics (FSO), also known as optical wireless communication or optical wireless networking, refers to the transmission of data using modulated beams of light through free space (air or a...

A galvanometric scanner, also known as a galvanometer scanner or galvo scanner, is a type of optical scanning device used to rapidly and precisely direct a laser beam or other light source to...

GigE, short for gigabit Ethernet, refers to a standard for high-speed Ethernet communication, capable of transmitting data at rates of up to 1 gigabit per second (Gbps), or 1000 megabits per second...

Graphene is a two-dimensional allotrope of carbon consisting of a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice pattern. It is the basic building block of other carbon-based materials...

A photoreceptor material used in solar cells and in drums for laser printers and high-speed copiers because of its high quantum efficiency over a wide spectral band, high data-rate capability and...

In semiconductor physics and materials science, the term "III-V materials" refers to compounds composed of elements from group III and group V of the periodic table. More specifically, these...

An image intensifier, also known as an image intensification tube or image intensification device, is a specialized electronic device used to amplify low-light-level images to make them visible to...

Indium phosphide (InP) is a compound semiconductor material composed of indium (In) and phosphorus (P). It belongs to the III-V group of semiconductors, where elements from groups III and V of the...

Inertial fusion energy (IFE) refers to a proposed method of generating electricity by harnessing the energy released from the fusion of light atomic nuclei, typically isotopes of hydrogen, through a...

An intensified charge-coupled device (ICCD) camera is an advanced imaging device that combines the capabilities of both an image intensifier and a charge-coupled device (CCD) sensor to achieve...

A Kerr soliton refers to a specific type of soliton, a self-reinforcing wave packet, that arises in nonlinear optical systems due to the Kerr effect. The Kerr effect is the phenomenon where the...

Line scan refers to a method of capturing images or data by scanning a single line at a time, as opposed to capturing the entire image simultaneously. This technique is commonly used in various...

A line-scan camera, also known as a line-scan image sensor or linear array camera, is a type of digital camera designed to capture images one line or row of pixels at a time, rather than a full...

A linear image sensor is a type of solid-state electronic device used to capture and convert light into electrical signals. Unlike area image sensors (such as CCD or CMOS sensors), which capture an...

A machine vision system is an integrated combination of hardware and software components designed to capture, process, and analyze images to perform automated inspection, measurement, and quality...

A type of high-speed photographic shutter that uses Faraday rotation to produce exposure times as fast as 1 microsecond. It consists of two polarizers, set with their planes of polarization at right...

A MEMS fiber optic switch is a microelectromechanical system (MEMS) device designed to selectively route optical signals between multiple fiber optic channels. These switches utilize miniature...

A metal-semiconductor-metal (MSM) photodiode is a type of photodetector that consists of metal electrodes on a semiconductor material. Unlike the more common PIN photodiodes, which have a P-type and...

A laser having a Q-switching method that allows separate parallel volumes of the lasing material to act independently of each other and produce several separate beams. It is useful in high-speed...

A type of high-speed cine camera that uses different image paths and a Kerr cell to produce a series of successive images at about 60,000,000 fps.