Photonics Dictionary

An optical waveguide in which only the lowest order bound mode, which may consist of a pair of orthogonally polarized fields, can propagate at the wavelength of interest.

A type of glass optical fiber that provides low pulse dispersion over a broad portion of the light spectrum and as a result can operate at 1300-nm and 1550-nm wavelengths simultaneously.

An optical fiber, usually a single-mode fiber, that has an outer cladding with nearly the same index of refraction as the core and an inner cladding with a very low index of refraction.

A dispersion-shifted fiber (DSF) refers to a type of optical fiber designed to minimize the effects of chromatic dispersion, which is the phenomenon where different wavelengths of light travel at...

Double-clad fiber (DCF) is a specialized optical fiber that features two concentric cladding layers surrounding a core. The design of double-clad fibers allows them to be used in various...

A fiber laser is a type of laser in which the active gain medium is an optical fiber doped with rare-earth ions such as erbium, ytterbium, or neodymium. Fiber lasers generate coherent light through...

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 preform is a cylindrical glass rod or tube used as the starting material for manufacturing optical fibers. It serves as the precursor from which optical fibers are drawn. The process of...

A microscope in which laser light is delivered through single-mode fibers that replace the pinhole usually used in confocal microscopy. When the Gaussian mode is imaged from the fiber output onto the...

GaN (gallium nitride) distributed feedback (DFB) lasers refer to a specific type of semiconductor laser based on Gallium Nitride materials and designed with a distributed feedback structure. These...

That distortion resulting from dispersion of the group velocity of a propagating mode. It is the only distortion occurring in single-mode waveguides.

For a single-mode fiber, the measurement of the irradiance distribution at the fiber's end face.

Also referred to as the V number in fiber optics; the normalized frequency is a dimensionless quantity, denoted by the symbol V, given by: where a is waveguide core radius, l is wavelength in vacuum,...

A photonic crystal surface-emitting laser (PCSEL) refers to a type of laser diode that emits light from its surface rather than from the edges. Photonic crystals are periodic nanostructures that...

Single-mode fiber that preserves the plane of polarization of the light launched into it as the beam propagates through its length. Also called polarization-maintaining fiber. The polarization is...

A means of achieving higher peak powers and more efficient harmonic generation by narrowing the pulse width and thus increasing the frequency bandwidth of the output of CW mode-locked lasers....

A standard for fiber optic telecommunications interfaces, with a 1300-nm data link operating over single-mode fiber at data rates of 52, 155 and 622 Mb/s.

In a single-mode optical fiber, the wavelength that causes material dispersion and waveguide dispersion to cancel each other. In a multimode fiber, loose term for the wavelength at which there is a...