Photonics Dictionary

A frequency comb is a precise and regular series of equally spaced spectral lines, or frequencies, that are generated with great accuracy. The term "frequency comb" is often associated with the Nobel...

Gallium nitride (GaN) is a compound made up of gallium (Ga) and nitrogen (N). It is a wide-bandgap semiconductor material that exhibits unique electrical and optical properties. Gallium nitride is...

GaN (gallium nitride) distributed feedback (DFB) lasers refer to a specific type of semiconductor laser based on Gallium Nitride materials and designed with a distributed feedback structure. These...

Harmonic generation refers to a nonlinear optical process in which incoming photons interact with a material and produce new photons at integer multiples of the frequency of the incoming photons....

High harmonic generation (HHG) refers to a nonlinear optical process in which intense laser light interacts with a gaseous medium, typically an atom or a molecule, to produce harmonics of the...

In semiconductor physics and materials science, the term "III-V materials" refers to compounds composed of elements from group III and group V of the periodic table. More specifically, these...

Indium phosphide (InP) is a compound semiconductor material composed of indium (In) and phosphorus (P). It belongs to the III-V group of semiconductors, where elements from groups III and V of the...

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...

Linear optics refers to the study and manipulation of light in a linear and deterministic manner, where the response of optical elements is proportional to the amplitude of the incident light wave....

A microcomb, short for microresonator frequency comb, is a novel photonic device that generates a precise series of evenly spaced optical frequencies, akin to the teeth of a comb, across a broad...

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...

A technique for detecting and measuring atmospheric pollution, in which an oscillating mirror directs half the incoming light to a transducer that controls amplitude and frequency, and the resulting...

Phase matching is a crucial concept in the field of optics, particularly in nonlinear optics and the generation of coherent light. It refers to the condition where the phases of two or more waves,...

Second-harmonic generation (SHG) is a nonlinear optical process that occurs when two photons with the same frequency combine within a nonlinear material, resulting in the generation of a new photon...

Second-order nonlinear optical properties refer to a class of phenomena exhibited by certain materials in response to intense light, typically in the realm of optics and photonics. Nonlinear optical...

A streak camera is a specialized instrument used to capture and analyze ultrafast phenomena, such as extremely short pulses of light or rapidly changing events. Unlike traditional cameras that...

An ultrafast pulsed laser is a type of laser that emits extremely short pulses of light with durations typically on the order of femtoseconds (10-15 seconds) or picoseconds (10-12 seconds). These...