Photonics Dictionary

A lens, both surfaces of which are ground and polished into a toric or cylindrical form.

The final correction of a polished surface or of an angle to the specified precision.

Concave and convex spherical mirrors are types of curved mirrors that have surfaces shaped like segments of spheres. These mirrors are commonly used in optics for various applications, including...

A plate consisting of fused optical fibers with both surfaces ground and polished, and having the entrance surface curved to match the image curvature of the input lens system. The plate transmits to...

1. A term used to describe the clouded appearance of an incompletely polished surface that scatters light. 2. The accumulation of moisture on an optical surface. 3. The extra spectral blackening of a...

Optical fibers fused together to form a solid, vacuum-tight assembly in the form of a slab or rod. Discs or rectangular shapes having ground and polished surfaces perpendicular to the fiber lengths...

The substrate upon which a diffraction grating will be ruled. It must be dimensionally stable, and the surface must be polished to an accurate flat or spherical form as required by the grating. The...

1. A measure of absorbed dose, equal to the energy imparted by ionizing radiation to a mass of matter corresponding to 1 J per kilogram. 2. A term used to denote an incompletely polished surface that...

A porous ceramic substance that is ground to a given optical form and on which a polished plate of glass is sagged by heat application. It is capable of transmitting in a partial vacuum. The glass...

An aggravated form of fog in a polished surface caused by the scattering of light. The defects causing haze are larger than those causing fog, but singly are not large enough to be seen by the...

A method of producing high-quality plastic optics in large volumes by injecting the heated, liquified plastic at high pressure into a tooled mold with polished chromium stainless steel inserts to...

Magnetorheological finishing (MRF) is a precision optics polishing technique used for shaping and finishing optical surfaces to achieve extremely high levels of smoothness and accuracy. It is...

A specially designed microscope for observing the etched surface of a polished metal specimen. The specimen is often laid face down on a horizontal stage and observed from beneath, the illumination...

A smooth, highly polished surface, for reflecting light, that may be plane or curved if wanting to focus and or magnify the image formed by the mirror. The actual reflecting surface is usually a thin...

An imaging system designed to highlight small deviations in a planar reflective object such as a mirror. The system can be used to detect minute flaws or to image faint marks that are made in the...

The series of rings or bands formed when light beams reflected from two polished, adjacent surfaces, placed together with a thin film of air between them, interfere. By counting these bands from the...

A polished plano-parallel plate that is contacted to an unpolished glass surface to permit see-through analysis of the material. The plate eliminates effects because of the surface quality of the...

A bubble at a polished surface that has been opened by grinding or polishing.

A piece of glass, pyrex or quartz having one or both surfaces carefully ground and polished plano, generally flat to less than a tenth of a wavelength. Optical flats are used in surface testing to...

A mold for glass or plastics often made of stainless steel to prevent pitting or oxidation in service. It is polished to the opposite curve of the surface that will be molded, and may be spherical or...

A prism is a geometric optical element with flat, polished surfaces that refract light. It is typically a solid, transparent object with at least two flat surfaces that are inclined relative to each...

A prism having several plane polished surfaces, some to transmit light, some to reflect light, and some to serve both functions in succession. It acts generally as a group of plane mirrors held in a...

The approximately concentric waves that form on a surface that has been polished without an oscillation of the polishing lap.

A term used to describe a saddle-shaped -- i.e., convex along one axis, concave along the other -- polished surface, generally an error, whose contours are apparent by the shape of Newton's rings.

A crude area on the polished surface, produced during coarse grinding, that subsequent fine grinding does not remove, owing, to some extent, to coarse grains of grinding sand that mixed with finer...

A defect on a polished optical surface whose length is many times its width. Block reek is a chainlike scratch formed in polishing. A runner cut is a curved scratch caused by grinding. A sleek is a...

A formed piece of glass, one surface of which has been ground and polished to the required curvatures.

Spots in a polished glass surface that are opaque and have a silvery, metallic reflection.

A reflector having a surface that has been superpolished to reduce residual sleeks and scratches and microroughness so that its scatter coefficient is low. Its surface is said to have a low-scatter...

A device used to detect elevation, pyramid and resolution errors in prisms and other components by bringing them into contact with the three highly polished, flat, perpendicular surfaces that form...

A process used to control thickness and parallelism precisely during the production of plane-parallel plates. Elements are cemented to a blocking tool and their upper surfaces are polished. A second...

In the context of electronics and semiconductor manufacturing, a wafer refers to a thin, flat disk or substrate made of a semiconducting material, usually crystalline silicon. Wafers serve as the...

1. In a polished surface, concentric waves that appear as zones in Newton's rings when a test glass is applied. 2. An arrangement of crystal faces that come together in a series of edges, all of...