Photonics Dictionary: D

A crystal that is characterized by its relatively poor electrical conductance.

A transparent crystalline substance that is anisotropic relative to the velocity of light.

Any of the constants that relate the tendency of the director to remain parallel to restoring torques throughout the media. The three constants of importance in liquid crystal displays are: splay --...

The process by which a vitreous or amorphous substance forms a crystal structure at a specified temperature.

Diamond turning, also known as diamond machining or diamond cutting, is a precision machining process used to produce high-quality optical surfaces and components with extremely tight tolerances. It...

Diamond turning refers to a precision machining process used to produce complex optical components, particularly lenses and mirrors, from materials such as metals, plastics, and crystalline materials...

A polarizer that consists of dichroic polarizing material embedded in a plastic sheet, and that transmits light that is almost completely plane polarized with an intensity that is half that of the...

Dichroism refers to the property of certain materials to exhibit different colors or absorbance of light depending on the direction of light propagation or polarization. The term is commonly used in...

A device used to investigate the dichroism of crystals.

A diode-pumped solid-state laser (DPSSL) is a type of laser system that uses semiconductor diode lasers to pump energy into a solid gain medium, resulting in the generation of coherent light. This...

In a liquid crystal system, the director refers to the local symmetry axis around which the long range order of the liquid crystal is aligned. In the case of the nematic phase, the molecular long...

The region of distorted atom configuration formed between the displaced and normal areas in a crystal when part of the crystal is displaced tangentially.

A primitive crystal possessing two plane surfaces that form a dihedral angle bisected by another plane surface.

In the context of materials science and semiconductor physics, doping refers to the intentional introduction of impurities into a semiconductor material in order to alter its electrical properties....

The separation of unpolarized light into two plane-polarized elements by a doubly refracting crystal. When a crystal, such as calcite, is placed between the eye and a pinhole in a card, two bright...

An optical correlator incorporating a binary phase-only spatial light modulator made from an iron garnet magneto-optic solid crystal and used in target recognition systems.

The theoretical explanation and analysis of the interactions between electron waves and crystals used in studying electron diffraction.