Photonics Dictionary: C

A charge-injection device (CID) refers to a class of devices that manipulate and detect electrical charge within a semiconductor material. Charge-coupled devices are a specific implementation of this...

A portable instrument that uses a four-sided reflecting prism or set of mirrors to create a duplicate image of an object on a horizontal sheet, on which outlines of the subject may be traced by hand.

Cathode radiant sensitivity refers to the ability of a photocathode to convert incident radiant energy, typically in the form of light, into an electrical signal. Photocathodes are components used in...

A CCD image sensor, or charge-coupled device image sensor, is a type of electronic device used to convert optical images into electronic signals. It is a key component in digital cameras, camcorders,...

In an interferogram, an intense portion of the recording that corresponds in size to the amount of infrared radiation incident on the detector.

1. Mounting a lens or mirror so that its optical axis is coincident with the optical or mechanical axes of other portions of the system. 2. The machining (edging) of the outside diameter of a lens...

In a perfectly centered lens, the mechanical axis (defined by the ground outside the diameter of the lens) is made to be exactly coincident with the optical axis (defined by a line through the...

A charge-coupled device (CCD) is a type of electronic image sensor used in various imaging devices, including digital cameras, camcorders, and scientific instruments. It consists of an integrated...

A light-sensitive detector having a chemical compound that reacts when exposed to light. It is used in photochemistry and relies on the chemical reaction to determine the amount of incident radiation.

Chirped mirrors are optical devices designed to manipulate the spectral properties of ultrashort laser pulses. They consist of multiple layers of dielectric coatings deposited on a substrate, where...

CID, or charge injection device, camera refers to a type of imaging device that utilizes a specific kind of solid-state image sensor technology. CID cameras are capable of capturing images in a...

Circular dichroism (CD) is a spectroscopic technique used to study the structural characteristics of chiral (asymmetric) molecules, particularly biomolecules like proteins, nucleic acids, and certain...

A CMOS image sensor, short for complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor image sensor, is a type of semiconductor device used to capture visual information and convert it into electrical signals for...

Electronic circuit capable of distinguishing the pulses emitted by separate counters in a given time phase and determining whether the pulses were emitted by the same particle or correspond to a...

A compound prism consisting of an assembly of small prisms cemented together that is used in a coincidence rangefinder to transmit the images from the two objectives to a single eyepiece for viewing.

An optical instrument used to determine the distance to a target being viewed. Two similar optical systems view the target via 45° mirrors at the ends of a fixed baseline. One system creates the...

The phenomenon observed by A.H. Compton in 1923 -- that some scattered radiation possesses a longer wavelength and correspondingly smaller frequency than the incident radiation. It may be described...

A computer-generated hologram (CGH) is a holographic image produced using computational methods and algorithms, rather than traditional optical techniques. CGHs are generated entirely in digital form...

A lens having surfaces whose centers of curvature coincide.

A confocal resonator, also known as a confocal cavity or confocal laser resonator, is a type of optical resonator configuration used in laser systems. The term confocal in this context refers to the...

Also known as convergent lens or convex lens. A lens that converges an incident bundle of rays to a focus.

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...

Translucent collector developed to compensate for the partial blocking of a flat surface's collection angle that normally occurs in spectroradiometry. The device samples radiant flux according to the...

Law relating the illuminance (or irradiance) of a surface to the cosine of the angle, q, between the normal to the surface and the direction of the incident wave.

A system consisting of two or more Geiger-Müller counters, connected in coincidence with their centers on an axis. The only particles recorded are those traversing all counters, near the axis,...

The least angle of incidence at which total internal reflection takes place. The angle of incidence in a denser medium, at an interface between the denser and less dense medium, at which the light is...

Calculation of the probability of an interaction between two types of particles, such as light absorption, excitation or energy transfers. The probability that one incident particle will interact as...