Photonics Dictionary: K

The diffraction of a particle by a standing lightwave.

In an interlaced scanning electro-optical system such as television, the system resolution will be less than the number of active scan lines because of the random phase nature of the object being...

An eyepiece consisting of a planoconvex field lens and a cemented doublet as the eye lens.

The material lost during a laser cutting or machining operation.

A cell filled with a transparent material that, when placed in a strong electrical field, exhibits double refraction. Since the two polarized elements of an incident light beam travel at different...

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...

E.I. duPont's trade name for an aramid yarn used as a strength member in the jacket of fiber optic cable.

The process of binding or attaching larger metal sheets by laser welding. The effect is generated by higher power densities which, while creating a larger weld, produce a vapor that is penetrated by...

A type of geometrical distortion that brings about a trapezoidal display of a nominally rectangular picture. Usually produced when a picture is projected abnormally to the screen.

That portion of physics concerned with motion in the abstract, such as of points or space figures, and separated from its dynamic properties.

A computer-generated kinoform used for data processing because of its use of incoherent light and its wide field of view, which facilitates parallel processing of two-dimensional data.

For any point on a thermal radiator, at thermal equilibrium and for each wavelength, the emissivity in any direction is equal to the absorptance for radiation from the same direction.

An imaging device originally created to image whole mouse brain volumes at microscopic resolution. The main component of the instrument is an automated microtome and microscope capable of producing...

A two-stage illuminating system for a microscope in which the source is imaged in the aperture of the substage condenser by an auxiliary condenser, and the substage condenser in turn forms an image...

Astronomical detector consisting of a photocathode isolated from the target by a coin value from which electrons are focused on a nuclear emission, producing tracks on the emission. Track density can...

An arc lamp that has its cavity filled with krypton to produce a light source with unique characteristics.

Pennwalt's trade name for polyvinylidene fluoride, a material used in the jacket of fiber optic cables where low smoke emission is deemed more important than flexibility.