Photonics Handbook

Except for direct illumination from the sun, laser, or other light source, everything we see or detect is ultimately scattered light. Light can be scattered or rescattered during its propagation to...

What are thin-film coatings? The purpose of any optical thin-film coating is to modify the transmittance and reflectance properties of the substrate material to which they are applied. Most coatings...

An optical time-domain reflectometer sends short pulses of light into a fiber and measures its reflections as a function of time. The delay of these reflections to the detector as well as their...

Just as an electronic connector provides a pluggable connection between electronic circuits, a fiber optic connector provides an optical one. The goal is joining a fiber to a transmitter, receiver or...

In the three decades since its introduction, the CO2 laser has become the workhorse of industrial lasers. Today it is available in a range of designs and sizes with output powers of 20 kW and more....

There are three fundamentally different dispersive phenomena in optical fiber, of which polarization mode dispersion (PMD) is the most complex. In digital multimode fiber systems, a light pulse...