Photonics Dictionary: C

A photoelectric detector consisting of a glass tube internally coated with a low conductance material. Voltage applied along the tube causes photoemission from the photocathode at the end of the tube...

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...

1. A localized fracture at the end of a cleaved optical fiber or on a glass surface. 2. An integrated circuit.

Chip-on-board (COB) lights refer to a type of LED lighting technology where multiple LED chips are directly mounted onto a substrate, typically a printed circuit board (PCB), without the need for...

A mechanism or device, especially a coating with a refractive index equal to or slightly greater than that of an optical fiber's cladding, that removes modes propagating through the cladding by...

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 defect in an optical system that prevents rays from reaching their intended destination; it can be caused by an undersized aperture, a baffle out of position, etc. In imaging applications, removing...

Equipment for testing an observer's color vision. Some tests require the identification or ordering of colored samples. The commercially available examples include: the Ishihara plates, on which...

The simplest lens in which all primary aberrations may be corrected. It consists of two positive crown elements on either side of, and spaced away from, a negative flint element.

A coverslip, also known as a cover glass or cover slip, is a thin and flat piece of transparent material typically made of glass or plastic. It is used in microscopy to cover a specimen mounted on a...

A microscope that allows examination of a small crystal and conveniently provides linearly polarized object and reference beams so that, by suitable orientation of an anisotropic crystal, the optical...

Calorimetry is a branch of science that involves the measurement of heat flow in physical or chemical processes. It encompasses various techniques and instruments used to quantify heat transfer,...

Camera Link HS (high speed) is a standard developed for high-speed digital data transmission in machine vision and industrial imaging applications. It is an evolution of the original Camera Link...

Focal, nodal or principal points of a lens. If the respective distances of the object and image are measured from the cardinal points, all thin-lens equations are applicable to thick lenses.

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...

A type of comparator with a telescope equipped with a cross wire mounted on a vertical sliding column. It is used to measure vertical distances on fairly near objects.

Cathode radiant sensitivity refers to the ability of a photocathode to convert incident radiant energy, typically in the form of light, into an electrical signal. Photocathodes are components used in...

An adaptation by Philips and Sony of their audio compact disc technology for optical disc data storage and retrieval. Current capacity of a disc is 0.5 to 0.6 gigabytes of information.

A technical specification for a consumer product drawn up by Sony and Philips. CD/I combines audio, video and text recorded as interleaved channels on a disc similar to an audio compact disc. The...

The surface curvature designed to reduce the marginal error found in the periphery of a spectacle lens.

The computer module whose circuitry interprets instructions and guides the actions of the peripherals. Also known as the mainframe.

A microscope that can be used to observe and magnify microscope specimens while they are being centrifuged. The objective rotates near the periphery of the centrifuge head, and the ocular is...

A charge-injection device (CID) refers to a class of devices that manipulate and detect electrical charge within a semiconductor material. Charge-coupled devices are a specific implementation of this...

The ray that passes through the center of the aperture stop in an optical system. It often is called the principal ray of an oblique beam.

Description of a particle that cannot be superimposed on its mirror image.

Chromatic aberration is an optical phenomenon that occurs when different wavelengths (colors) of light are refracted by a lens or optical system, leading to a failure to focus all colors to the same...

CID, or charge injection device, camera refers to a type of imaging device that utilizes a specific kind of solid-state image sensor technology. CID cameras are capable of capturing images in a...

An optical instrument used to track and image a test vehicle (target) throughout its flight. The cinesextant frequently includes multiple devices such as high-speed video and film cameras as well as...

Circular dichroism (CD) is a spectroscopic technique used to study the structural characteristics of chiral (asymmetric) molecules, particularly biomolecules like proteins, nucleic acids, and certain...

A mode that is confined by virtue of a lower-index medium surrounding the cladding. Cladding modes, in the terminology of mode descriptors, are equivalent to cladding rays in the terminology of...

A CMOS camera refers to an imaging device that employs a complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) image sensor to capture digital images. CMOS cameras have become ubiquitous due to their low...

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...