Definitions

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...

Lens which, by altering the phase, efficiently images through a holographic process.

Label-free refers to a technique or method that does not require the use of additional labels, tags, or markers to detect or identify specific components or entities. In various scientific and...

The laser output refers to the generated and emitted light produced by a laser system. This output is characterized by several key properties that distinguish lasers from other light sources. These...

A laser, which stands for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation," is a device that produces coherent and focused beams of light through the process of optical amplification based...

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 Laurent polarimeter is an instrument used in optics for measuring the rotation of plane-polarized light caused by optically active substances. Optical rotation, also known as optical activity, is a...

Lensless microscopy, also known as computational or holographic microscopy, is an imaging technique that captures and reconstructs microscopic images without the use of traditional lenses. Instead of...

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 lock-in amplifier is a specialized electronic instrument used to extract and measure small signals embedded in noise or interference. It is particularly useful in fields such as spectroscopy,...

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...

Technique in which the polarization rotation of light, and its relationship to the magnetic field strength can be analyzed and related to various experimental parameters when passed through a...

A magnon is a quasiparticle representing a quantized spin wave in a magnetic material. In other words, it is a collective excitation of the spins of electrons in a magnetic solid, analogous to the...

The temperature at which the solid phase of a material is in equilibrium with the liquid phase, or when the material changes from a solid to a liquid.

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...

A metalens, short for "metasurface lens," is a type of optical lens that uses nanostructured materials to manipulate light at a subwavelength scale. Unlike traditional lenses made of glass or other...

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...

In an optical system, noise created by mode-dependent optical losses and variations in the distribution of radiant power among the modes or relative phases of the modes. Also known as speckle noise.

Mode-locking is a technique used in lasers to produce ultrashort pulses of light with durations on the order of picoseconds, femtoseconds, or even attoseconds. This method synchronizes the phases of...

A computer-generated, phase-and-amplitude, off-axis hologram made by a multi-exposure technique that uses three computer generated transmission masks. Each mask controls one fixed-phase component of...

A modulator is a device or component that modifies a carrier signal in order to encode information for transmission over a communication channel. The process of modulating involves varying one or...

A nonlinear crystal used to modulate a polarized beam of light by means of the Pockels effect. A Pockels cell is used as a voltage-controlled waveplate by means of applying a known voltage across the...

A specific form of phase shifting interferometry - commonly referred to as multiple wavelength phase shifting interferometry - this form of interferometry utilizes two short wavelengths to synthesize...

A lithography method that allows the transfer of fine-pitch gratings from a phase mask into photoresist. The exposure takes place with the light coming under an oblique angle to the mask. The...

Also referred to as differential interference contrast (DIC) microscopy; Nomarski microscopy is a unique form of microscopy especially suited for the evaluation of surface quality and defects as well...

Radiation having waves that are out of phase in space and/or time.

An optical crystal that possesses a strong nonlinear dielectric response function to optical radiation. A material with a strong second-order nonlinearity must not possess a center of symmetry. See...

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...

Nonlinear optics is a branch of optics that studies the optical phenomena that occur when intense light interacts with a material and induces nonlinear responses. In contrast to linear optics, where...

Nonlinear polarization refers to the phenomenon where the polarization of a material responds nonlinearly to an applied electric field. In linear systems, the polarization of a material is directly...

The phenomenon that can render an optical resonator the equivalent of a semiconductor flip-flop. A bistable device will remain stable in two optical states, one of high transmission and another of...

An optical combiner, in the context of optics and display technologies, refers to a device or component that combines multiple optical signals or images into a single output. The purpose of an...

The storage of information via optical means, primarily employing a low-power laser to inscribe data on a photosensitive surface as pits or phase differences and to read such data via reflected light...

A rigid medium, generally a polycarbonate substrate coated with a reflective aluminum layer, that stores information (such as audio, video or data) as digital bits in the form of variations in the...

Optical noise refers to undesirable fluctuations or disturbances in an optical signal that can affect the quality or integrity of the transmitted information. This type of noise is particularly...

The relative path difference (or phase shift) traveled between two rays that pass through different mediums from the same object point. For a perfect optical system, the optical path, or distance,...

Optical strain sensors are devices that utilize optical principles to measure the deformation or strain experienced by a material under mechanical stress. These sensors convert changes in strain into...

The function that characterizes the quality of an optical system by denoting the modulation and spatial phase shift of the image of a sinusoidal object with frequency as the independent variable.

Optoelectronics is a branch of electronics that focuses on the study and application of devices and systems that use light and its interactions with different materials. The term "optoelectronics" is...

A device using a parametric amplifier inside a resonant optical cavity to generate a frequency-tunable coherent beam of light from an intense laser beam of fixed frequency. This device is tuned by...

A device that determines the lens shape in the cutting or edging phase of fabrication. It also is used to denote the arrangement of markings on a reticle.

A wave whose surfaces of constant phase are infinite parallel planes normal to the direction of propagation.

In optics, the Pockels effect refers to the phenomenon where the refractive index of a material changes in response to an applied electric field. This effect is utilized in Pockels cells, which are...

Power modulation refers to the intentional variation of power levels in a signal, often in the context of electronic communication systems. This modulation technique is used to encode information...

A probe card is a testing device used in the semiconductor manufacturing industry to evaluate and test the electrical characteristics of integrated circuits (ICs) on a wafer. Its primary function is...