Photonics Dictionary: D

A system for fabricating optical fiber, consisting of a furnace that heats the materials, a polymer coating stage, a capstan-pulling apparatus that free-draws the preform into a fiber and a drum on...

An astronomical scanning technique for capturing images of stars without moving the sensor. To perform a drift scan, a CCD sensor's readout rate must be synchronized with the motion of celestial...

The hardware for reading (and writing in devices so equipped) an optical mass data storage disk.

A package for electronic components that is suited for automated assembly into printed circuit boards. The DIP is characterized by two rows of external connecting terminals or pins, which are...

Spectrophotometry in which radiation of two separate wavelengths, usually one in an absorption band and the other not, pass through the specimen. The resulting data allows correction for attenuation...

A material's ability to undergo plastic deformation, specifically elongation, without fracturing.

Propagation of electromagnetic waves through the Earth's atmosphere in a path that conforms to the curvature of the Earth due to atmospheric thermal inversion. Regions of the atmosphere act as a...

For a detector, the amount of time alotted for the observation of one location.

A laser using a dye solution as its active medium. Its output is a short pulse of broad spectral content and its achievable gain is high. Dye lasers function at room temperature. Synchronous pumping...

The subtractive imbibing process of transferring color prints on paper whereby the dyes from three separately prepared images are transferred to one sheet of paper to form the color print.

A type of erasable data storage device that uses a medium deposited on the disc in two layers, each dyed to absorb a different wavelength of laser light. To record data, the lower layer is heated by...