Photonics Dictionary

Photonic crystals are artificial structures or materials designed to manipulate and control the flow of light in a manner analogous to how semiconductors control the flow of electrons. Photonic...

A crystal, glass, or quartz slicing and cutting machine is a specialized piece of equipment used in the manufacturing process to precisely cut and slice materials such as crystals, glass, and quartz...

Germanium crystal refers to a crystalline form of the element germanium (Ge), which is a metalloid and semiconductor commonly used in various electronic and optical applications. Germanium crystals...

A laser crystal, also known as an active medium or gain medium, is a solid-state material used in the construction of lasers. The primary function of the laser crystal is to amplify light by...

A scintillation crystal, also known simply as a scintillator, is a material that emits light when it interacts with ionizing radiation such as gamma rays, x-rays, or charged particles. The emitted...

A YAG crystal refers to a solid-state crystal made of yttrium aluminum garnet (YAG), which is a synthetic crystalline material. YAG crystals are known for their exceptional optical properties,...

An accelerometer is a sensor or transducer that measures the rate of change of velocity of an object, or in simpler terms, it measures acceleration. Accelerometers are widely used in various...

Optic surface cleaning liquid that may be applied to glass, crystal, dielectric and metal surfaces; however, may not be applied to plastic and polymer materials.

The angular change of an incident beam due to vibrational induced refractive index changes within a crystal.

Light diffracted by a solid (usually quartz in crystal or fused form) traversed by acoustic waves. If the ultrasonic wavelength is larger than the diameter of the light beam, the diffraction orders...

An acousto-optic modulator (AOM) is a device that utilizes the interaction between sound waves and light waves to modulate or control the intensity, frequency, phase, or direction of laser beams. It...

A bulk crystalline optic which permits the propagation of light through a volume of index altered material. The variation in refractive index along the material volume is due to a piezoelectric...

A type of liquid-crystal display in which each display element contains an active component, such as a thin-film transistor, to maintain its state between refresh scans.

When applied to LCD grids, the active matrix is a means of supplying power to pixels by use of a transistor and capacitor. The transistor functions with leads in operation with its respective row and...

In biaxial crystals, the principal angle that bisects the smaller angle between the optic axes.

A host crystal for chromium that emits pulsed or continuous-wave laser light, tunable from about 720 to 790 nm.

An alexandrite laser is a solid-state laser that utilizes a synthetic crystal made from the rare earth element alexandrite (BeAl2O4:Cr3+). This crystal is capable of emitting laser light in the...

The disordered, glassy solid state of a substance, as distinguished from the highly ordered crystalline solid state. Amorphous and crystalline phases of the same substance differ widely in optical...

The angle between the most divergent rays that can pass through the lens to form an image. In a birefringent crystal light modulator or Pockels cell, the maximum angle in the incident light rays that...

Anisotropic is a term used to describe a material or substance that exhibits different properties or behaviors in different directions. In other words, the physical or mechanical characteristics of...

Anisotropy refers to the property of exhibiting different values or characteristics when measured in different directions. In various fields, including physics, materials science, and geology,...

Attenuated total reflectance (ATR) spectroscopy is a technique used in analytical chemistry to obtain IR spectra of samples. It is particularly useful for analyzing solid and liquid samples without...

The rule stating that positive uniaxial crystals have greater absorption with respect to the extraordinary component of light, whereas negative crystals have greater absorption for the ordinary...

A device containing two opposed quartz wedges of equal angle, one wedge being movable along its length by a micrometer screw. The wedges are cut so that their fast directions are along, and...

The emission of a photon by the return of an excited carrier from the conduction band to the valence band of a semiconductor along a radiative recombination path. The resulting photoluminescence...

A relatively hard crystal, highly resistant to excessive energy radiation, that is frequently used for optical windows, prisms and lenses transmitting from the vacuum UV into the IR.

A crystalline material used in piezoelectric devices.

A plane in a crystal that lies parallel to the principal plane of symmetry.

The application of reversible writing with a laser beam on particular storage materials. In one method, an amorphous film is heated and then crystallized for writing. Bubble writing involves the...

A birefringent crystal having two axes along which there is an absence of double refraction. Mica, sulphur and turquoise are biaxial crystals.

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 transmits light in a series of sharp, widely spaced wavelength bands by its sandwich construction of alternating layers of polarizing films and plates cut from birefringent crystal.

1. A group of optical fibers that are fused and then treated to produce a vacuum-tight optical fiber cone or plate. 2. An artificial crystal in its raw state, after generation but prior to cutting or...

A technique in which a beam of x-rays is directed against a crystal, the atoms of which, because of their lattice arrangement, reflect the ray in the same way as a series of plane surfaces. If the...

The scattering of x-rays by the regularly spaced atoms in a crystal. The angle at which the reflection occurs is known as the Bragg angle.

The law expressing the condition under which a crystal will reflect a beam of x-rays with the greatest amount of distinction or resolution and, at the same time, denoting the angle at which the...

One of the constants h, k, f or I, used to demonstrate any set of parallel planes in a crystal of the hexagonal system.

Crystal growth method that resembles static freeze, but that induces growth by removing the ampoule from the furnace so that the freezing-point temperature gradient is unchanged during the growth...

Brillouin scattering is a phenomenon in physics where an incident electromagnetic wave (usually light) interacts with acoustic phonons (quantized lattice vibrations) in a material, resulting in the...

A doubly refracting mineral used to produce polarizing prisms. It is uniaxial negative and in the trigonal division of the hexagonal system of crystals. Its indices are e = 1.486, w = 1.658; its...

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...

White, tetragonal crystals used in the production of luminous coatings.

Colorless crystals used in photoelectric cells and for photosensitive material in cathodes.

Chalcogenide refers to a class of compounds containing elements from group 16 of the periodic table, which includes sulfur (S), selenium (Se), and tellurium (Te). These elements are known as...