Photonics Dictionary: T

A precise telescope set on a pair of rotation axes, the horizontal and vertical axes equipped with two divided circles. One circle measures horizontal angles and the other measures vertical angles....

Two 30° prisms that are used to produce constant deviation when rotated by equal and opposite angles.

A variation of tomography in which several photographs of a patient are taken at different angles, and back-projection of the resulting radiographs produces light distribution in a chosen...

A symmetrical, very wide-angle lens. Well-corrected for spherical aberration and color, the Topogon can cover fields up to 90° at speeds from f/11 to f/6.3.

A surface that is swept out by revolving a circle about an axis that lies in the plane of the circle but that does not intersect its center. The result is a surface having different curvatures in...

Image displacement by a decentered lens, rotated on a chuck whose axis of rotation passes through the geometrical center of the rim of the lens, when the light source is at an infinite distance. It...

Total internal reflection fluorescence (TIRF) microscopy is an advanced fluorescence microscopy technique that leverages the principle of total internal reflection to selectively illuminate and image...

The reflection that occurs within a substance because the angle of incidence of light striking the boundary surface is in excess of the critical angle.

With respect to a crystal, having three unequal axes intersecting at angles, only two of which can be equal and only one of which can measure 90°.

Also known as corner-cube reflector or retrodirective reflector. Three reflecting surfaces, perpendicular to each other, that are arranged like the inside corner of a cube. As the triple mirror has a...

The effect by which sufficiently small particles will scatter blue light at right angles to the incident beam. This scattered light is completely linearly polarized.