Photonics Dictionary

A roughening laser is a laser-based surface modification technique aimed at altering the surface texture of a material to achieve specific properties such as enhanced adhesion, light diffusion, or...

Bearing alternate ridges and grooves; corrugated. Said of some optical surfaces.

A digital imaging method whereby the first gray level in the ordered sequence and the position of the first lengths of all runs are specified; used when there are only two possible gray levels...

Self-phase modulation (SPM) is a nonlinear optical phenomenon that occurs when an intense laser beam passes through a medium, causing a change in the phase of the light due to its interaction with...

A semiconductor is a type of material that has electrical conductivity between that of a conductor and an insulator. In other words, semiconductors have properties that are intermediate between...

An instrument that uses a blackened silver-disc reflector with a shutter to create temperature fluctuations that are proportional to the intensity of the solar radiation incident upon it. Using the...

A spatial light modulator (SLM) is an optical device that modulates or manipulates the amplitude, phase, or polarization of light in two dimensions, typically in the form of an array. SLMs are...

Spatially offset Raman spectroscopy (SORS) is a technique that extends traditional Raman spectroscopy by incorporating measurements at different spatial offsets. This method allows for the selective...

A slight displacement in the position of a spectral line because of an alteration in frequency, as a result, in turn, of a cause such as the Doppler effect.

Potential alternative to the conventional pulse approximation method of digital image processing because of its highly desirable interpolating and approximating characteristics.

Birefringence of materials that is induced or altered by stress fields.

Structural color refers to coloration in materials that is not caused by pigments or dyes but is instead a result of the physical structure of the material. In structural color, the interaction of...

A technique of optical storage whereby information is encoded by molecular alterations in the interaction between the optical layer and the substrate.

A waveguide having a characteristic that is altered continuously with the distance traveled, relative to the axis of its path.

The effect that characterizes an intense laser beam that is passed through an absorbing medium, causing the absorbed energy to produce density changes that can alter the intensity distribution of the...

An alternative term for incandescence.

Thin-film coatings are layers of material applied to the surface of an object or substrate, typically to modify its optical, electrical, or mechanical properties. These coatings are composed of thin...

A family of semiconductor switching devices of which the silicon-controlled rectifier and the triac are most commonly used. They are fabricated from four positive and negative alternating layers.

A cine camera that exposes a series of individual frames to record the changes in a subject that slowly alters with time. This results in the eventual showing of an event that happened over an...

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...

The process whereby a quantum mechanical system alters from one energy level to another. During this process, energy is emitted or absorbed, and it usually takes the form of photons, phonons, or...

An alternate term for lateral chromatic aberration. See chromatic aberration.

Abbreviated TEA CO2 laser. A gas laser that provides shorter pulses and higher peak powers than conventional CO2 lasers. The electrical excitation pulse occurs transversely to the optical axis...

Twisted intramolecular charge transfer (TICT) is a phenomenon observed in certain organic molecules containing electron-donor and electron-acceptor groups that are linked together within the same...

A device used in a free-electron laser to convert the electron-beam's energy into microwave laser radiation by creating a magnetic field of alternating polarity through which the free electrons are...

Vision transformer (ViT) networks are neural network architectures that apply the Transformer architecture, originally developed for natural language processing, to the task of processing visual...

A device that converts alternating voltage to direct voltage, while at the same time increasing its amplitude.

An instrument for eye surgery that directs intense xenon arc light through the transparent cornea lens to the retina where absorption by the pigment epithelium and the choroid produces heat and...

The intensity regulation of a cathode-ray tube by alteration of the grid-cathode voltage.

A plate of glass, usually a photograph, on which there is a central spot surrounded by concentric annular zones, alternately opaque and transparent, the radii of the boundaries between the zones...