Photonics Dictionary: B

A ball lens is a small, spherical optical component typically made of glass or other transparent materials. It is characterized by its spherical shape, with both its front and back surfaces forming...

Beam profiling is a technique used to characterize and analyze the spatial intensity distribution of a laser beam. It involves measuring and visualizing how the optical power or intensity is...

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 band of light that appears along the outer edge of a transparent material under microscopic investigation and that moves toward higher refractive indices as the microscope's focus is raised, and...

A small convergent lens, located between the objective and eyepiece of a microscope, that focuses an image of the upper focal plane of the objective in the focal plane of the eyepiece. It is commonly...

A device having a pair of decentered lenses, one for each eye, that focuses on a single object as a magnifier. It is often supplied with a forehead fixture or an elastic headband to leave the hands...

Also called proximity focus image intensifier. A compact image intensifier that utilizes a microchannel plate intensification stage. This is an in-line device that does not invert the image.

The loss of focus of a camera sensor because of excessive brightness, characterized by the enlargement of spot size and halation on a cathode-ray tube.

A blur circle refers to the out-of-focus region in an image captured by an optical system. When an object in a scene is not in perfect focus, its image is spread out into a circular shape on the...

A convex lens that brings an incident bundle of rays to a focus to produce intense heat at the focus.