Photonics Dictionary: P

A camera designed to form a continuous record of an expansive section of the horizon. The typical panoramic camera is mounted to rotate about a vertical axis. A slit opening in the film plane and the...

An array of lines in the infrared region of the emission spectrum of atomic hydrogen. Their wave numbers are expressed by the equation: where represents the wave number in the reciprocal centimeters,...

A Peltier cooler, also known as a thermoelectric cooler (TEC) or thermoelectric module, is a solid-state device that uses the Peltier effect to transfer heat between two electrical junctions. It can...

A photomultiplier tube (PMT) is a highly sensitive vacuum tube that detects and amplifies low levels of light. It is widely used in various applications where high sensitivity, fast response times,...

A type of computer in which the electronic circuits, which process data serially, are replaced by photonic circuits capable of parallel processing and thus of much greater speed and power. Where the...

In image processing and elsewhere, generally an adjective to describe an assembly-line arrangement for performing a task. For example, an image is put through one kind of processing step and then...

The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is a widely used molecular biology technique used to amplify a specific segment of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) through a series of temperature-controlled cycles....

Power modulation refers to the intentional variation of power levels in a signal, often in the context of electronic communication systems. This modulation technique is used to encode information...

System of information coding in which the signal is sampled 8000 times per second and the samples quantized by referring them to a series of preset 8-bit codes. Thus digitized, the signal is sent to...

A series of capacitors and inductors connected to the flashlamp in a pumped Nd:YAG laser system in order to regulate the pulse shape of the current delivered to the lamp at a given operating voltage.

A laser that emits energy in a series of short bursts or pulses and that remains inactive between each burst or pulse. The frequency of the pulses is termed the pulse-repetition frequency.