Photonics Dictionary: K

A device designed to measure radiant energy, particularly in the thermal region.

In an interlaced scanning electro-optical system such as television, the system resolution will be less than the number of active scan lines because of the random phase nature of the object being...

The SI unit of temperature equal to 1°C. See absolute temperature scale.

A simple form of astronomical telescope that uses a fixed objective and a focusable eyepiece. The objective forms an intermediate image in the instrument, resulting in an image that appears upside...

A cell filled with a transparent material that, when placed in a strong electrical field, exhibits double refraction. Since the two polarized elements of an incident light beam travel at different...

The Kerr effect, named after the physicist John Kerr who first observed it in 1875, is a nonlinear optical phenomenon where the refractive index of a material changes in response to an applied...

A Kerr soliton refers to a specific type of soliton, a self-reinforcing wave packet, that arises in nonlinear optical systems due to the Kerr effect. The Kerr effect is the phenomenon where the...

A dark region created by spherical aberration of an eyepiece's exit pupil. Because of the aberration, an observer's eye must be at different distances from the eyepiece to view different regions of...

A unit of frequency that equals 1000 cps. Abbreviated kHz.

A unit of energy or work that is equal to 1000 (103) joules. Abbreviated kJ.

A cathode-ray tube that serves as a picture tube in a television receiver. The signal representing the picture intensity is transmitted to the electron gun grid so that the beam intensity varies with...

An atmospheric nonlinear process unique to CO2 laser wavelengths, whereby CO2 absorbs 10.6-µm radiation and the CO2 molecules in the (100) vibrational state are excited to the (001) level, and...

A computer-generated kinoform used for data processing because of its use of incoherent light and its wide field of view, which facilitates parallel processing of two-dimensional data.

For any point on a thermal radiator, at thermal equilibrium and for each wavelength, the emissivity in any direction is equal to the absorptance for radiation from the same direction.

An imaging device originally created to image whole mouse brain volumes at microscopic resolution. The main component of the instrument is an automated microtome and microscope capable of producing...

A visual, single-unit spectrophotometer with a biprism and a Wollaston prism. The Wollaston prism polarizes coincident images of the two halves of the entrance aperture.

An arc lamp that has its cavity filled with krypton to produce a light source with unique characteristics.

Pennwalt's trade name for polyvinylidene fluoride, a material used in the jacket of fiber optic cables where low smoke emission is deemed more important than flexibility.