Photonics Dictionary

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

An achromat, in the context of optics, refers to a type of lens or lens system designed to reduce chromatic aberration. Chromatic aberration is an optical phenomenon where different colors of light...

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

In photography, the density gradient across an edge separating light from darkness, a physically measurable quantity that correlates well with subjectively observed sharpness of definition. By...

A lens aberration that results in the tangential and sagittal image planes being separated axially.

A mode of data transmission whereby each bit of information is generated separately, with some stop/start code to indicate the interval between bits.

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 experimental lens used to produce interference fringes. A positive lens is cut into halves along its center, and the halves are separated. This produces a double image of a slit source set...

A device having a pair of decentered lenses, one for each eye, that focuses on a single object as a magnifier. It is often supplied with a forehead fixture or an elastic headband to leave the hands...

The difference in angular bearing of an object as seen by the two eyes, due to the separation of the visual optical axes.

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...

A filter that separates light into many colors via Bragg's law. Generally refers to a fiber Bragg grating used in optical communications to separate wavelengths.

A breakout cable, also known as a fan-out cable or breakout assembly, is a type of cable that combines multiple individual cables into a single, larger cable. The breakout cable is designed to...

Carrier injection refers to the process of introducing charge carriers (either electrons or holes) into a semiconductor material. Semiconductors are materials with electrical conductivity between...

An instrument consisting of a high-voltage vacuum tube used to form hard x-rays or high-speed ion beams. By partitioning the tube into separate sections, the total voltage is divided.

Chemical vapor deposition (CVD) equipment refers to a class of specialized apparatus used in the process of chemical vapor deposition, a technique for depositing thin films of various materials onto...

The chemical method of separating compounds dissolved in one phase (usually mobile) through its equilibration with a second phase (usually stationary). The mechanism of separation may involve...

Naturally occurring planes in crystalline substances that provide easy points for separation.

The transmission of a color photograph by separating the colors into varying intensities of red, blue and green, and then sending separate transmissions of the three color signals to a receiving...

The recording of three or more separate holograms having a different color on a medium, so that illumination with a tricolor beam yields three separate wavefronts, each representing one of the...

An instrument that uses a beam of light to scan a color transparency, and three differently filtered photosensors to record the transmitted beam, as a means of producing three exposed separation...

A filter that passes a series of wavelength regions that are at equal distances from one another, such that its output resembles the teeth of a comb. In video transmission, a comb filter is used to...

Complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) refers to a technology used in the fabrication of integrated circuits, particularly semiconductor devices like microprocessors, memory chips, and image...

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...

The interaction of superimposed light from two separate sources that results in a combined intensity that is less than the sum of their individual intensities before they were superimposed.

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 dichroic mirror, also known as a dichroic beamsplitter or interference filter beamsplitter, is an optical device that selectively reflects or transmits light based on its wavelength. Dichroic...

Dispersion refers to the phenomenon where different wavelengths (colors) of light travel at different speeds when passing through a medium. This variation in the speed of light for different colors...

The separation of unpolarized light into two plane-polarized elements by a doubly refracting crystal. When a crystal, such as calcite, is placed between the eye and a pinhole in a card, two bright...

A defect of a binocular instrument causing two images to be seen separately instead of being fused. It is caused when the optical axes of the two telescopes are not parallel. In minor cases, the eyes...

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...

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

An etalon is an optical device that consists of two parallel reflecting surfaces separated by a precise and known distance. It operates based on the principle of optical interference and is used to...

A sensor generally used for infrared imaging. It consists of two chambers separated by a thin, blackened membrane. An infrared image is formed on the membrane by a lens or mirror and produces...

An exciton is a quasiparticle that represents the bound state of an electron and a hole in a solid-state material, typically a semiconductor or an insulator. In simpler terms, an exciton is a paired...

1. A strainmeter capable of measuring the change in the relationship between two reference points, provided that the points are separated by at least 20 to 30 m. 2. An instrument used to determine...

A laser oscillator in which two mirrors are separated by an amplifying medium with an inverted population, making a Fabry-Perot cavity. Standard diode lasers are Fabry-Perot lasers.

A fiber optic spectrometer is a device used for measuring the spectral content of light. It utilizes optical fibers to transmit light from a source to a spectrometer unit, where the light is...

A microscope in which laser light is delivered through single-mode fibers that replace the pinhole usually used in confocal microscopy. When the Gaussian mode is imaged from the fiber output onto the...

A fiber-coupled LED (light-emitting diode) refers to an LED device that is optically coupled to an optical fiber for the purpose of efficient light transmission. In this configuration, the LED serves...

The separate spectral lines formed by a diffraction grating that are characterized by one wavelength difference in path length between adjacent slits.

In various fields such as fluid dynamics, microfluidics, and biotechnology, a flow channel refers to a defined pathway through which a fluid (liquid or gas) flows. The channel can be of various...

Flow cytometry is a powerful technique used in biology and medicine for the quantitative analysis of the physical and chemical characteristics of cells and particles suspended in a fluid. The method...

The number of separate images exposed by a cine camera in a second or the number illuminated by a cine projector in a second. By varying the number of images recorded per second, films can be created...