Photonics Dictionary

A frequency comb is a precise and regular series of equally spaced spectral lines, or frequencies, that are generated with great accuracy. The term "frequency comb" is often associated with the Nobel...

Harmonic generation refers to a nonlinear optical process in which incoming photons interact with a material and produce new photons at integer multiples of the frequency of the incoming photons....

The Kerr effect, named after the physicist John Kerr who first observed it in 1875, is a nonlinear optical phenomenon where the refractive index of a material changes in response to an applied...

A Kerr soliton refers to a specific type of soliton, a self-reinforcing wave packet, that arises in nonlinear optical systems due to the Kerr effect. The Kerr effect is the phenomenon where the...

A microcomb, short for microresonator frequency comb, is a novel photonic device that generates a precise series of evenly spaced optical frequencies, akin to the teeth of a comb, across a broad...

Nonlinear optical materials are substances that exhibit optical properties that are not linearly proportional to the intensity of incident light. In other words, these materials produce optical...

Second-harmonic generation (SHG) is a nonlinear optical process that occurs when two photons with the same frequency combine within a nonlinear material, resulting in the generation of a new photon...

Second-order nonlinear optical properties refer to a class of phenomena exhibited by certain materials in response to intense light, typically in the realm of optics and photonics. Nonlinear optical...

An ultrafast pulsed laser is a type of laser that emits extremely short pulses of light with durations typically on the order of femtoseconds (10-15 seconds) or picoseconds (10-12 seconds). These...