Photonics Dictionary: F

A device in which slab geometry internally compensates for thermal-optic distortion; the solid host material -- glass or Nd:YAG -- is in the form of a rectangular slab with plane parallel faces. The...

The effect discovered by Faraday in 1845 whereby nonoptically active materials or substances become capable of rotating the polarization plane of polarized radiation (light) passed through them when...

A fiber laser is a type of laser in which the active gain medium is an optical fiber doped with rare-earth ions such as erbium, ytterbium, or neodymium. Fiber lasers generate coherent light through...

A fiber optic spectrometer is a device used for measuring the spectral content of light. It utilizes optical fibers to transmit light from a source to a spectrometer unit, where the light is...

A fiber optic transceiver, often simply referred to as an "optical transceiver," is a device used in fiber optic communications to transmit and receive data over optical fibers. It integrates both a...

A device, also called a fluorescence lifetime instrument, that measures decay curves of fluorescing samples. It generally consists of a gated pulsed flashlamp or a cavity dumped dye laser...

A fiber optic device that uses a HeNe laser, beamsplitter, monochromator and photomultiplier to detect trace levels of chemicals and viruses in samples inside or outside the body.

Freeform mirrors refer to reflective optical components that deviate from traditional symmetric or rotationally symmetric shapes, such as spheres or paraboloids. Unlike conventional mirrors, which...