Photonics Dictionary

An optical device, such as a Nicol prism, capable of producing plane-polarized light, and used for detecting the effect of the object on plane-polarized light produced by the polarizer.

An antireflection coating (AR coating) is a thin film or coating applied to optical surfaces, such as lenses or windows, to minimize unwanted reflections and increase the transmission of light...

An optical device that produces a line image lying along the axis from a point source of light; therefore, it has no definite focal length. A lens with a weak conical surface on one face.

A beam shaper is an optical device or system designed to modify the spatial profile or intensity distribution of a laser or light beam. The goal is to transform the incoming beam into a desired shape...

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...

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...

Blaze height typically refers to a parameter in the context of diffraction gratings, which are optical devices consisting of a series of closely spaced parallel grooves or slits. The blaze height is...

A large tank filled with liquid hydrogen, with a flat window at one end and complex optical devices for observing and photographing the rows of fine bubbles formed when a high-energy particle...

An optical instrument consisting of a well- corrected objective lens or mirror with a light source and or object/image (i.e. illuminated slit or retical) at its focal plane. Collimators are used to...

That property of certain optical devices, e.g., a penta prism, that maintains the angular relationship between the entering and the emerging rays traversing the system regardless of the orientation...

A corner cube, also known as a corner reflector or retroreflector prism, is a type of optical device used to reflect light or electromagnetic waves back towards their source with minimal deviation in...

1. An optical device used for projection of enlarged images of transparencies or lantern slides on a screen. 2. A device designed to hold and backlight transparencies so that their images can be...

A dichroic mirror, also known as a dichroic beamsplitter or interference filter beamsplitter, is an optical device that selectively reflects or transmits light based on its wavelength. Dichroic...

Diffraction efficiency is a measure of how effectively a diffractive optical element (DOE) or diffraction grating directs light into specific diffraction orders or achieves a desired optical effect....

Any optical device that utilizes diffraction in an image-forming capability. Familiar diffractive lenses are zone plates, holographic lenses, kinoform lenses and binary optics.

An electron-beam lithography (EBL) system is a sophisticated nanofabrication tool used in the semiconductor industry and research laboratories to pattern extremely fine features with sub-micrometer...

An etalon is an optical device that consists of two parallel reflecting surfaces separated by a precise and known distance. It operates based on the principle of optical interference and is used to...

An optical device used to monitor movement of the human eye.

A fiber optic imaging bundle is a specialized optical device composed of multiple optical fibers bundled together. Each fiber optic strand within the bundle acts as a conduit for transmitting light....

The field of view (FOV) refers to the extent of the observable world or the visible area that can be seen at any given moment through a device, such as an optical instrument, camera, or sensor. It is...

Fresnel reflection refers to the reflection of light at the interface between two different media with different refractive indices. This phenomenon was named after the French engineer and physicist...

A grating beamsplitter is an optical device that utilizes the principles of diffraction to split a beam of light into multiple beams, often redirecting them at specific angles. It is based on the...

An optical device that permits the alignment of a gun, cannon or rocket launcher system with its target.

In optics, the term image jump refers to a displacement or shift in the apparent position of an image when a change occurs in the optical system. This phenomenon is often observed in certain types of...

Integrated photonics is a field of study and technology that involves the integration of optical components, such as lasers, modulators, detectors, and waveguides, on a single chip or substrate. The...

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 lateral shearing interferometer is an optical device used in interferometry to measure phase differences between two beams of light. Interferometry is a technique that combines and analyzes...

A lens is a transparent optical device that focuses or diverges light, allowing it to pass through and form an image. Lenses are commonly used in optical systems, such as cameras, telescopes,...

The angle subtended by two points or lines that are just far enough apart to be distinguished as separate. The ability of an optical device to resolve two points or lines is called resolving power...

Linear optics refers to the study and manipulation of light in a linear and deterministic manner, where the response of optical elements is proportional to the amplitude of the incident light wave....

Liquid crystals are a state of matter that exhibits properties intermediate between those of conventional liquids and solid crystals. In a liquid crystal, the molecules are ordered like those in a...

A liquid crystal light valve (LCLV), also known as a spatial light modulator (SLM), is an optical device that modulates the intensity, phase, or polarization of light passing through it using liquid...

A Mach-Zehnder interferometer is an optical device used to measure the phase difference between two collimated beams of light. It is named after the physicists Ludwig Mach and Ludwig Zehnder, who...

Magneto-optics refers to the study and manipulation of the interaction between magnetic fields and light (electromagnetic radiation). This field of physics explores how the properties of light, such...

The ratio of the size of the image of an object to that of the object. The ratio of the linear size of the image to that of the object is lateral magnification. Angular magnification is the ratio of...

An electrical or optical device used to convert color coordinates.

Meta-optics, also known as metasurface optics or flat optics, is a branch of optics that involves the design, fabrication, and utilization of artificial structures called metasurfaces to control and...

Metasurfaces are two-dimensional arrays of subwavelength-scale artificial structures, often referred to as meta-atoms or meta-elements, arranged in a specific pattern to manipulate the propagation of...

A microring resonator is a compact optical device that utilizes the resonant behavior of light within a small ring-shaped waveguide structure to selectively enhance or filter certain wavelengths of...

MTF analysis/measurement equipment refers to instruments and tools used to measure and analyze the modulation transfer function (MTF) of optical systems. The MTF is a quantitative measure of the...

Multi-axis alignment refers to the process of aligning or adjusting components or systems in multiple spatial dimensions or axes. In various technical and engineering contexts, achieving precise...

Nanophotonics is a branch of science and technology that explores the behavior of light on the nanometer scale, typically at dimensions smaller than the wavelength of light. It involves the study and...