Definitions

The investigation of microstructures by an instrument that generates a narrow, highly collimated beam of x-rays.

An array of active optical devices (modulators, laser diodes and/or detectors), each of whose electrical inputs or outputs are directly connected to electronic logic circuits, which also are a part...

A form of liquid crystal in which flow does not take place in the usual manner. When examined with polarized light, the substance often forms drops that display a series of fine lines. X-ray...

A transmission interference microscope that produces interference patterns of a sample by using birefringent plates that split a polarized beam of light into ordinary and extraordinary rays, then...

The incident ray, the normal to the refracting surface at the point of incidence of the ray at the surface, and the refracted ray all lie in a single plane. The ratio of the sine of the angle between...

A group of solar cells that are electrically contacted and physically arranged so that they may be oriented in the direction of the sun simultaneously.

A ruggedized scintillation counter used in oil well logging. The cylindrical housing contains a gamma ray source, a crystalline scintillator and a photomultiplier tube. As the sonde is drawn through...

A spatial light modulator (SLM) is an optical device that modulates or manipulates the amplitude, phase, or polarization of light in two dimensions, typically in the form of an array. SLMs are...

When, for example, a beam of monochromatic light passes through a diffraction grating, the emergent rays that have remained undeviated are included in the zero spectral order. The light flux in the...

A spectral signature, in the context of remote sensing and spectroscopy, refers to the unique pattern or characteristic spectral response of a material or object across different wavelengths of the...

A high-contrast transparency of the gas sought, or an array of exit slits that correlates with some features of the spectrum. No standardized formula for positioning, number or thickness has been...

A scanning device used to cyclically tune through a given frequency range to determine the amplitude-frequency distribution of the signals present, usually by displaying output on a chart or...

A spheric lens, also known as a spherical lens, is a type of optical lens with at least one surface that is part of a sphere. This means that the lens surface is curved in a symmetrical manner,...

Spherical aberration is an optical aberration that occurs when light rays passing through a lens or curved optical surface do not converge or diverge to a single focal point. Instead of focusing to a...

A container which secures multiple splice trays and protects the trays and their contents from damage.

A container that prevents spliced fibers from becoming damaged or being misplaced.

A method of evaluating image quality whereby a large number of rays are traced through a lens from a single object point, and their intersections with the focal plane are plotted and analyzed.

A memory system composed of a stack of holographic plates, a mode-locked laser and a rapid detector array. Ultrashort laser pulses are used to extract information from the stack. In this way, storage...

The splitting or shifting of spectral lines or energy levels caused by the application of a strong transverse electrical field. It often is studied with a canal-ray tube that has a third electrode...

A technique for creating optimal performance in a system by producing a specific beam irradiance distribution, usually through the use of geometric optics. A common design involves the use of ray...

The projection of the image beam by a cathode-ray tube through a mask, where it is deflected through the suitable character position in the mask and then deflected by another system to its suitable...

The array of methods used in the transmission and reception of pictures and images with a three-dimensional appearance.

A cathode-ray tube combined with an electrostatic storage unit that is used to introduce, store and retrieve information translated into electric charge form.

The determination of axially symmetric and asymmetric refractive-index distributions by use of interferometry carried out on the basis of the approximation of a straight path of rays passing through...

A streak camera is a specialized instrument used to capture and analyze ultrafast phenomena, such as extremely short pulses of light or rapidly changing events. Unlike traditional cameras that...

The pattern formed by a character generation cathode-ray tube system, in which the characters are composed of a sequence of line segments (strokes) generated by the electron beam motion with time...

An image of an object that appears above the object's true position as the result of abnormal refraction of the image rays by the atmosphere.

An acoustic wave that propagates along the surface of a solid and decays exponentially with substrate depth. Also called a Rayleigh wave, it has both longitudinal and transverse (shear) components....

A synchrotron is a type of particle accelerator that uses magnetic fields to steer charged particles, typically electrons or positrons, in a closed, circular or elliptical path. The name synchrotron...

Radiation emitted by electrons when they travel in circular orbits at speeds close to that of light. Synchrotron radiation occurs in the x-ray and ultraviolet regions of the spectrum. Once considered...

Optical aberration such that image magnification varies with ray distance from the optical axis in a radial distortion.

1. The anode or anticathode of an x-ray tube that emits x-rays when bombarded by electrons. 2. The screen in a television imaging tube that is scanned by an electron beam to determine the...

There are three types of telecentric lenses: -Image-space telecentric lenses are those in which the aperture stop is located at the front focus, resulting in the chief rays being parallel to the...

A telescope lens is a primary optical component of a telescope system that gathers and focuses light to form an image. It is typically a curved, transparent piece of glass or other optical material...

Terahertz (THz) refers to a unit of frequency in the electromagnetic spectrum, denoting waves with frequencies between 0.1 and 10 terahertz. One terahertz is equivalent to one trillion hertz, or...

A method of scanning in which a frame transfer device produces a continuous video image of a moving object by means of a stack of linear arrays aligned with and synchronized to the movement of the...

The distribution of gray-scale values in an image.

In a cathode-ray tube, the visible line or lines formed on the screen by the deflection of the electron stream.

A metal box with an opal glass front enclosing a lamp, used for viewing color transparencies or x-ray films.

The distortion of an image formed by a cathode-ray tube, caused by unbalanced deflection voltages or deflection voltages that are not symmetrically aligned with the resultant anode potential.

In a color cathode-ray tube, a grouping of three color dots (red, blue and green) that represent one pixel in the final image.

A compound lens consisting of two negative lenses of flint glass. A double-convex lens of crown glass is cemented between the two negative lenses. With this system, it is possible to decrease...

Also known as corner-cube reflector or retrodirective reflector. Three reflecting surfaces, perpendicular to each other, that are arranged like the inside corner of a cube. As the triple mirror has a...