Photonics Dictionary

Optical cements and adhesives are specialized materials used in the assembly and bonding of optical components in optical systems. These materials are designed to provide secure and durable bonds...

3D printing, also known as additive manufacturing (AM), is a manufacturing process that builds three-dimensional objects layer by layer from a digital model. This technology allows the creation of...

The minimum energy required to induce atomic and molecular separation or displacement due to incident intense laser irradiation.

Cemented prisms of differing refractive indices which refract incident light and, due to differing refractive indices, will not spatially separate individual wavelengths.

Additive manufacturing (AM), also known as 3D printing, is a manufacturing process that involves creating three-dimensional objects by adding material layer by layer. This is in contrast to...

An intermolecular substance that serves to hold materials together. Two types are used in the optical industry: one, which must be transparent and colorless, to cement lenses together; and a...

Displacement in a direction perpendicular to that of the intended displacement, as in a translation stage with simple flexures that experiences vertical displacement during horizontal motion; it is...

Augmented reality (AR) is a technology that integrates digital information, typically in the form of computer-generated graphics, images, or data, with the real-world environment in real-time. AR...

An autocollimator is an optical instrument used for measuring small angular deviations with high precision. It operates on the principle of autocollimation, where a light source is directed onto a...

A beamsplitter is an optical device for dividing a beam into two or more separate beams. A simple beamsplitter may be a very thin sheet of glass inserted in the beam at an angle to divert a portion...

An adhesive used to hold optical elements to blocking tools. It is usually a thermoplastic substance such as resin, beeswax, pitch or shellac.

Pitch, wax, resin or other cement suitable for holding optical parts to a spindle during grinding and polishing processes.

An instrument used to support optical parts to be cemented, or to be mounted in plaster.

In the optical field, a piece of glass to which a lens or prism is cemented. The unit is ground and polished as a whole to obtain a sharp edge on the finished piece.

A compound prism composed of two 30° prisms, one of which is partially coated with a suitable opaque metal of high reflecting power. The prisms are cemented with Canada balsam so that the coated...

A resin obtained from the balsam fir, Abies balsamea, used as a lens cement.

An adhesive used for bonding optical elements or for holding devices.

The surface of an element of a compound lens that will produce the cemented interface. The curves of this interface are called inside curves. To facilitate cementing, the two inside curves should...

In optics, degreasers or ultrasonic arrangements used for removing pitch, cement or polishing material from lenses during manufacture. It also may refer to manual cleaning devices used immediately...

A CMOS image sensor, short for complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor image sensor, is a type of semiconductor device used to capture visual information and convert it into electrical signals for...

A coherent fiber bundle (CFB), also known as a coherent fiber optic bundle, is an assembly of multiple optical fibers arranged in a specific geometric pattern to maintain the spatial coherence of...

A compound prism consisting of an assembly of small prisms cemented together that is used in a coincidence rangefinder to transmit the images from the two objectives to a single eyepiece for viewing.

Cold atoms refer to atoms that have been cooled to extremely low temperatures, typically in the microkelvin (µK) to nanokelvin (nK) range, close to absolute zero (0 Kelvin or -273.15°C). At...

An optical element that measures the phase difference between two components of elliptically polarized light to correct for mechanical or optical displacement.

1. A constituent part. It may consist of two or more parts cemented together, or with near and approximately matching surfaces. 2. The projection of a vector on a certain coordinate axis or along a...

A lens composed of two or more separate elements of optical glass that may or may not be cemented together. The surfaces of the elements are shaped to reduce or eliminate the aberrations inherent in...

Energy loss encountered at connectors in optical fiber transmission systems. The major contributors are mutual core displacement and fiber axis tilt. It is observed in both permanent splices and...

Technique that uses high-pass filtering to reduce the local average to zero for all regions of the picture and then applies a gain factor equal to the reciprocal of the local standard deviation to...

One area of image enhancement, accomplished by spatial filtering schemes, that usually involves attenuation of phase changes in the complex amplitude over a limited region of the Fourier spectrum of...

An image-enhancement technique in which each pixel is subjected to a mathematical operation that groups it with its nearest neighbors and calculates its value accordingly.

A compound prism formed by cementing together two 30° prisms, one of right-handed and one of left-handed quartz. It has good ultraviolet-transmitting qualities and no double refraction.

Adhering material used to glue optical components that transmit in the infrared. It is easily dissolved by acetone.

For an optical table, the amount of displacement that occurs when a heavy load is placed or moved on the surface. To measure deflection under static load, a 113-kg (250 lb) weight is placed in the...

Die bonding is a critical process in semiconductor manufacturing and microelectronics assembly, where a semiconductor die or chip is attached and electrically connected to a substrate or a package....

Differential interference contrast (DIC) microscopy, also known as Nomarski interference contrast microscopy, is an optical imaging technique used in microscopy to enhance the contrast of transparent...

The technique by which an analog image is converted by any of several means into a finite array of points, each represented by some numerical value. Once created, this array can be the basis of a...

Digital signal processing (DSP) refers to the manipulation and analysis of signals, which are representations of physical quantities that vary over time or space. In the context of DSP, these signals...

The principle stating that the displacement of spectrum lines is determined by the distance between, and relative velocity of, the observer and the light source. When distance decreases, the lines of...

1. A compound lens consisting of two elements. If there is an air space between the elements it is called an "air-spaced doublet.'' If the inner surfaces are cemented together, it is called a...

An optical system having two sets of components separated by an air space, while successive lenses in each set are cemented together.

In the tolerancing of optical elements, the displacement of the optical axis from the mechanical axis.

In image processing, any operation that strengthens information about the edges of objects displayed. Three types of spatial filtering are used: shift and difference, gradient and Laplacian.