Photonics Dictionary: M

High-voltage, fast-discharge circuit named after its inventor, Erwin Marx. Its capacitors are charged in parallel and discharged in series. The voltage multiplication achieved with a Marx circuit is...

A wedge in a rangefinder or heightfinder used to displace the image produced by one telescope so that it coincides with that produced by the other telescope, thus affording a measurement of the...

An accurate metal prism or plane parallel plate that is cemented to an optical element and remains with it during a series of grinding or polishing processes. The metal element contains threaded...

Microfluidics is a multidisciplinary field that involves the manipulation and control of very small fluid volumes, typically in the microliter (10-6 liters) to picoliter (10-12 liters) range, within...

The least space between two parallel lines that can be discriminated as a gap to the human eye. It is measured in terms of the angle subtended by the gap measured at the eye.

In general, changes in one oscillation signal caused by another, such as amplitude or frequency modulation in radio which can be done mechanically or intrinsically with another signal. In optics the...

The resulting interference pattern generated from moiré deflectometry, the moiré pattern is a pattern developed from interference or light blocking, when gratings, screens or regularly...

A computer architecture used in parallel processing whereby all the processing elements are operating under their own local control rather than under the direction of a central control unit.

The series of equally spaced parallel slits that make up a scanning aperture in place of a single slit, in the scanning of a repetitive pattern.

A laser having a Q-switching method that allows separate parallel volumes of the lasing material to act independently of each other and produce several separate beams. It is useful in high-speed...

A form of shearing interferometer that contains a simple wedged (plane-parallel) glass plate with a nonzero optical path difference to create interference between split optical wavefronts. The...