Photonics Dictionary: K

The material lost during a laser cutting or machining operation.

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 measurement of the hardness of a material as determined by the penetration depth of a diamond stylus under a specified amount of pressure.

A two-flux theory in which the radiation is assumed to be composed of two oppositely directed radiation fluxes through a continuous medium. The theory has been widely used to relate the total diffuse...

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.