Photonics Dictionary

Mode-locking is a technique used in lasers to produce ultrashort pulses of light with durations on the order of picoseconds, femtoseconds, or even attoseconds. This method synchronizes the phases of...

A ring dye laser that uses prisms and a saturable absorber within the laser cavity to shape and shorten the pulses generated. Counterpropagating modes oscillating simultaneously in the ring...

An excimer laser is a type of ultraviolet laser that emits short pulses of light in the ultraviolet spectrum. The term excimer is derived from excited dimer, reflecting the nature of the gain medium...

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 device, also called a fluorescence lifetime instrument, that measures decay curves of fluorescing samples. It generally consists of a gated pulsed flashlamp or a cavity dumped dye laser...

A frequency comb is a precise and regular series of equally spaced spectral lines, or frequencies, that are generated with great accuracy. The term "frequency comb" is often associated with the Nobel...

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 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 technique of generating ultrashort -- down to subpicosecond -- pulses by pumping a dye laser with mode-locked laser pumps with cavity lengths the same as, or a submultiple of, that of the dye...