Photonics Dictionary

A beamsplitter is an optical device used to divide a beam of light into two or more separate beams, typically by reflecting a portion of the incident light while transmitting the remainder....

Birefringence is an optical property of certain materials that causes them to exhibit different refractive indices for light of different polarizations. In other words, when light passes through a...

Deep multiphoton microscopy is an advanced imaging technique used in biological and biomedical research to visualize structures and processes deep within tissues with high resolution. It combines the...

A dichroic coating, also known as a dichroic filter or dichroic mirror, is an optical coating designed to selectively transmit or reflect certain wavelengths of light while simultaneously absorbing...

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 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...

Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) is a mechanism describing the transfer of energy between two closely spaced fluorescent molecules. This phenomenon is named after the German scientist...

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...

Harmonic generation refers to a nonlinear optical process in which incoming photons interact with a material and produce new photons at integer multiples of the frequency of the incoming photons....

Metasurfaces are two-dimensional arrays of subwavelength-scale artificial structures, often referred to as meta-atoms or meta-elements, arranged in a specific pattern to manipulate the propagation of...

Nonlinear polarization refers to the phenomenon where the polarization of a material responds nonlinearly to an applied electric field. In linear systems, the polarization of a material is directly...

In optics and photonics, "phase" refers to a property of electromagnetic waves, such as light, that describes the position of a wave at a given point in time within its oscillation cycle. More...

Photoluminescence is a phenomenon in which a material absorbs photons (light) at one wavelength and then re-emits photons at a longer wavelength. This process occurs when electrons in the material...

A nonlinear label-free imaging technique commonly used during surgical procedures for the visualization of collagen fibers and muscle tissue (myosin) with submillimeter resolution. During the...

Second-harmonic generation (SHG) is a nonlinear optical process that occurs when two photons with the same frequency combine within a nonlinear material, resulting in the generation of a new photon...

Three-photon microscopy is an advanced imaging technique that belongs to the family of multi-photon microscopy methods. It is used in biological and medical research to capture high-resolution images...

Total internal reflection fluorescence (TIRF) microscopy is an advanced fluorescence microscopy technique that leverages the principle of total internal reflection to selectively illuminate and image...

Two-photon excited fluorescence (TPEF) is a nonlinear optical method that allows imaging of biological cells and living tissue. The advantage of TPEF in comparison to conventional fluorescence...