Photonics Dictionary

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...

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...

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

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...

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

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.

A cement used to reduce crosstalk in fiber optic bundles or plates.

Edge enhancement with a directional characteristic.

The digitization process by which an image is manipulated to increase the amount of information perceivable by the human eye.

A semiconductor platelet laser that emits a coherent image by means of plane optical pumping over the platelet surface, and that uses laser threshold characteristics to produce a pronounced threshold...

Edge enhancement technique that accentuates all edge details in an image without discriminating as to spatial orientation.

Plasma-enriched deposition or planar magnetic sputtering that offers increased deposition rates in optical thin-film production. This technology surpasses conventional and RF sputtering.

An adhesive used to hold optical components in their mounts. It may be a thermoplastic or chemical-hardening substance.

The movement of an object seen through a refracting prism toward the apex of a prism.

A permanent, transparent, and highly transmissive adhesive capable of withstanding extreme temperatures that is applied to optical surfaces for the purpose of cementing, or the sticking together of...

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...

An adhesive whose viscosity decreases as the temperature is increased to a limit. Canada balsam, resin and pitch are examples of thermoplastic cements.

An adhesive that permanently sets or hardens at a specified high temperature. Methacrylate is an example of a thermosetting cement.

The formula that gives the wavelength of maximum spectral radiant emittance of a perfect blackbody: λmax = 2898/T(µm) The radiation at this λmax can be calculated as follows:...

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...

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...

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.

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...