Photonics Dictionary

A beamsplitter is an optical device used to divide a beam of light into two or more separate beams, typically by reflecting a portion of the incident light while transmitting the remainder....

An experimental lens used to produce interference fringes. A positive lens is cut into halves along its center, and the halves are separated. This produces a double image of a slit source set...

An instrument consisting of a high-voltage vacuum tube used to form hard x-rays or high-speed ion beams. By partitioning the tube into separate sections, the total voltage is divided.

The recording of three or more separate holograms having a different color on a medium, so that illumination with a tricolor beam yields three separate wavefronts, each representing one of the...

A dichroic coating, also known as a dichroic filter or dichroic mirror, is an optical coating designed to selectively transmit or reflect certain wavelengths of light while simultaneously absorbing...

A dichroic mirror, also known as a dichroic beamsplitter or interference filter beamsplitter, is an optical device that selectively reflects or transmits light based on its wavelength. Dichroic...

A cathode-ray tube that either splits an electron beam from one source or uses beams from two sources to produce two beams, each of which can produce separate traces, but which can overlap.

Holographic recording whereby the object is illuminated by two pulses, separated by a time interval, from a Q-switched laser source. Each pulse is divided into reference and object beams, and...

A microscope in which laser light is delivered through single-mode fibers that replace the pinhole usually used in confocal microscopy. When the Gaussian mode is imaged from the fiber output onto the...

A fiber-coupled LED (light-emitting diode) refers to an LED device that is optically coupled to an optical fiber for the purpose of efficient light transmission. In this configuration, the LED serves...

Flow cytometry is a powerful technique used in biology and medicine for the quantitative analysis of the physical and chemical characteristics of cells and particles suspended in a fluid. The method...

A holographic grating is a type of diffraction grating that is produced using holographic recording techniques. It consists of a periodic structure of alternating transparent and opaque regions,...

A television camera tube that preceded the development of the vidicon tube and incorporated a method to separate reflected and scattered portions of the return beam so that only the scattered...

The process whereby white light is separated into its component wavelengths. Light beams of different wavelengths are separated from each other by undergoing a different angular deviation. Prisms and...

A Mach-Zehnder interferometer is an optical device used to measure the phase difference between two collimated beams of light. It is named after the physicists Ludwig Mach and Ludwig Zehnder, who...

In the context of thin film deposition processes such as evaporation or sputtering, masks are used to selectively deposit material onto substrates, creating patterns or structures with precise...

A device that uses electromagnetic fields to separate electrically charged particles according to their masses. As a beam of charged particles is passed through a mass spectrograph, the result is a...

Microscopy is a scientific technique that involves the use of microscopes to observe and study objects that are too small to be seen with the naked eye. Microscopes are instruments that magnify and...

A hologram formed by reconstruction of multicolor wavefronts. The system used to produce the hologram is designed to combine the different colored wavefronts of the separate illuminating sources, and...

A laser having a Q-switching method that allows separate parallel volumes of the lasing material to act independently of each other and produce several separate beams. It is useful in high-speed...

A function that quantifies the performance degradation of coherent communications systems, imaging systems and all systems that rely on the spot size of a laser beam that has propagated along an...

An optical combiner, in the context of optics and display technologies, refers to a device or component that combines multiple optical signals or images into a single output. The purpose of an...

A device that is used to determine the index of refraction of a gas or liquid through the interference patterns formed by two beams of light, one of which has been transmitted by the sample. A single...

A transmission interference microscope that produces interference patterns of a sample by using birefringent plates that split a polarized beam of light into ordinary and extraordinary rays, then...

Controlled beam technology that introduces beams of sunlight through holes in a roof that are relayed throughout the building by a series of mirrors and lenses. Ideally, cool lighting is obtained by...