Photonics Handbook

Electrical engineers are very familiar with the effects of shot noise, thermal noise, flicker noise and crosstalk, and recognize how these effects can reduce the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in their...

There are three fundamental properties of light: intensity, wavelength, and polarization. Almost all cameras today are designed for monochrome or color imaging. A monochrome camera is used to measure...

Since its first successful operation in 1960 at Hughes Research Labs, the laser technology has been at the center of innovation and research. Semiconductor lasers first made their appearance in 1962...

The term fluorescence is often applied as a synonym for photoluminescence, although luminescence actually covers fluorescence and phosphorescence. Both of these terms describe the process of...

By its original definition, a nanopositioning device is a mechanism capable of repeatedly delivering motion in increments as small as one nanometer. Lately demands from industry and research have...

As recently as five years ago, shopping for a microscope light source was fairly straightforward. For routine applications, it was tungsten halogen, typically 100 W, while for fluorescence, it was an...

Profiling beams under 10 µm in size is one of the more challenging beam profiling applications. There are numerous reasons for this, including the very small size. Focal plane arrays commonly...

Given the pace at which technology advances, there always seems to be a learning curve. With the abundance of consumer electronics available, there typically is no right or wrong way to use these...

Optical fibers are made from either glass or plastic. Most are roughly the diameter of a human hair, and they may be many miles long. Light is transmitted along the center of the fiber from one end...

Light is a versatile tool for investigating physical and chemical processes in nature. Any specific system being analyzed may, through the light it emits or reflects, communicate information about...

Optical design software allows the user to develop a configuration of optical elements that manipulate the trajectory of light for the purposes of creating an image, illuminating a target, coupling...

Laser development for the microscopy market continues to be driven by key trends in applications, which currently include superresolution techniques, multiphoton applications in optogenetics and...

The first high-reflectance mirror coatings for the UV and vacuum UV (VUV) were of the Al + MgF2 type produced in the late 1950s. Coatings of this design are still used today for multigas cavity...

Over 60 years have passed since the first demonstration of a laser in 1960. After the initial spark of interest, lasers were for a while categorized as “a solution waiting for a problem,”...

What are thin-film coatings? The purpose of any optical thin-film coating is to modify the transmittance and reflectance properties of the substrate material to which they are applied. Most coatings...

Excimers are pulsed gas lasers that deliver high output power and pulse energies in the ultraviolet and deep-ultraviolet wavelengths. This enables them to power applications that cannot be supported...

Since their invention in the late 1960s, charge-coupled devices, also called CCDs, have found widespread use in imaging applications. Electronic cameras based on CCD technology are used in...

Abbe Error — Linear off-axis errors introduced by angular deviations coupled to a moment arm at the point of interest on stage mounted devices (θ in Figure 1). The effect of Abbe error...

An optical time-domain reflectometer sends short pulses of light into a fiber and measures its reflections as a function of time. The delay of these reflections to the detector as well as their...

Image intensification, the basis of night vision, is a complex conversion of energy particles that occurs within a vacuum tube. An image-intensifier system works by collecting photons through an...

The basic setup in laser perforation includes a pulsed laser, a lens and either a moving mirror, a rotating web or both. Each laser pulse creates a hole in the material. During the blank time in...

Charged-injection device imagers are metal-oxide semiconductor (MOS) detectors that can be fabricated using PMOS, NMOS and CMOS integrated circuit technology, and may be configured as a...

That portion of the spectrum that the eye can see — and its rainbow of colors — is rather small, covering approximately 360 to 830 nm. What colors we perceive depends on wavelength, while...

Photonic components are key elements for the information technology (IT). Photonics technology covers the generation of information (cameras, sensors), its transportation (optical communication),...

Hyperspectral imaging spectroscopy has developed dramatically from a large, complex, remote-sensing satellite- or aircraft-based system into a rugged, compact, economically priced imaging and...

Designing devices that incorporate ultrathin films is an important means of enhancing yields. However, characterizing ultrathin films provides a challenge for mainstream metrology tools such as...

Illumination design has developed rapidly to include not only automotive headlamps and street lamps, but also backlit displays, fluorescent panel lighting, light-emitting diode or laser sources, and...

While some design engineers know exactly what they need from their laser diode, others may choose a partner to navigate what can be a complex development process. Laser diode manufacturers know which...

Applications facilitated by tunable lasers fall into two categories: situations in which one or more discrete wavelengths are not available from any single- or multiline fixed-wavelength laser, or...

The market for flat panel displays (FPDs) has undergone tremendous growth, driven mostly by increased demand for televisions, cell phones, computers, digital cameras and MP3 players. Similarly,...

All optical spectrometry techniques rely on the measurement of radiant power. The configuration of the instrument varies based on the measurement technique: absorption, emission, luminescence, or...

Images are produced by many means: cameras, x-ray machines, electron microscopes, radar and ultrasound. They are used in the entertainment, medical, scientific and business industries; for security...

Reading and writing systems for polygonal scanners differ in the use of the scanner. However, many performance characteristics are similar for both. In writing applications, a light source, usually a...

For any discussion of laser beam diagnostics, it is first necessary to define some terms that characterize beam properties. Broad definitions can include measurements of laser energy or power,...

An indicator of how well the entire system performs is a measurement called bit-error-ratio (BER). Acceptable BERs range from one error per billion to one per trillion bits transmitted. It is rare...

NSOM is suitable for studies on the mesoscopic scale (several tens to hundreds of molecular dimensions). It has become an important tool in research and applications of semiconductors, organic layers...

There are three fundamentally different dispersive phenomena in optical fiber, of which polarization mode dispersion (PMD) is the most complex. In digital multimode fiber systems, a light pulse...

Imaging has long been used in industrial processes to measure, monitor, control, or otherwise manage the production of goods. The challenge to the process designer is to develop a tool that captures...

As bit rates increase to meet expanding demand, systems have become increasingly sensitive to polarization-related impairments. These include polarization mode dispersion (PMD) in optical fibers,...

The scope of optical spectroscopic instrumentation is indeed very broad. Many analytical methods rely on the interaction of radiation with matter and are often described in the context of quantum and...