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5,268 terms
Photonics Dictionary
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Jamin refractometer
An instrument designed to measure the index of refraction of a gas by the interference patterns formed by two beams, one of which passes through a vacuum tube in which the gas is slowly released.
jellet prism
A prism produced by severing a Nicol prism and reconstructing the polarization angles of the two halves so that they are slightly wedged toward each other.
jet-streamed dye laser
A continuous-wave dye laser that uses a circulation pump and nozzle to provide an optically flat stream of dye across the laser's optical axis.
JIAWG
joint integrated avionics working group
jig allowance
Also called coating jig allowance. That margin on an optical component that is outside the clear aperture for use in holding the component in the optical thin-film coater tooling during the...
jig transit
An optical instrument containing a gimballed sighting telescope, used to measure angular relationships in horizontal and vertical planes.
jitter
1. In relation to cathode-ray tube displays, errors in the signal's amplitude, phase or both that result in small, rapid aberrations in size or position of the image. 2. Errors of synchronization...
Josephson effect
Characteristic of radiation detectors that produce energy that is similar to the energy of superconductive gaps when interacting with photons.
Joule-Thomson cooler
A detector cooling device in which a gas under high pressure escapes through an expansion valve in the tank; as the escaped gas liquefies, it cools the site of the sensor.
JPL
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
junction diode
A semiconductor device with the property of conducting current more easily in one direction than the other. It has two terminals containing a single crystal of semiconducting material that ranges...
kampometer
A device designed to measure radiant energy, particularly in the thermal region.
Kapitza-Dirac diffraction
The diffraction of a particle by a standing lightwave.
Kell factor
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...
Kellner eyepiece
An eyepiece consisting of a planoconvex field lens and a cemented doublet as the eye lens.
keratometer
See color perception test equipment; eye test apparatus.
kerf
The material lost during a laser cutting or machining operation.
kernel
->
convolution kernel
The group of adjacent pixels on which the convolution process is carried out.
Kerr cell
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...
Kerr effect
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...
Kerr soliton
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...
keystone distortion
A type of geometrical distortion that brings about a trapezoidal display of a nominally rectangular picture. Usually produced when a picture is projected abnormally to the screen.
kidney-bean effect
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...
kinematics
That portion of physics concerned with motion in the abstract, such as of points or space figures, and separated from its dynamic properties.
kinescope
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...
kinetic cooling
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...
kinoform filter
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.
Kirchhoff's law
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.
klystron
A thermionic tube that has a velocity-modulated electron stream and that may be used as a microwave amplifier or oscillator.
knife-edge scanning microscope
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...
knife-edge test
->
Foucault knife-edge test
The Foucault test is performed by moving a knife edge laterally into the image of a small point source. The eye, or a camera, is placed immediately behind the knife edge, and the exit pupil of the...
Knoop hardness
A measurement of the hardness of a material as determined by the penetration depth of a diamond stylus under a specified amount of pressure.
Koehler illumination
A two-stage illuminating system for a microscope in which the source is imaged in the aperture of the substage condenser by an auxiliary condenser, and the substage condenser in turn forms an image...
Kovar
Westinghouse trade name for an alloy of iron, nickel and cobalt, which has the same thermal expansion as glass and therefore is often used for glass-to-metal or ceramic-to-metal seals.
Kramers-Kronig relation
Analysis of the reflection spectrum that allows the determination of the experimental dielectric function.
kron camera
Astronomical detector consisting of a photocathode isolated from the target by a coin value from which electrons are focused on a nuclear emission, producing tracks on the emission. Track density can...
Kubelka-Munk theory
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...
Kundt effect
->
Faraday effect
The Faraday effect, named after the English scientist Michael Faraday, is a phenomenon in physics where the polarization plane of light is rotated when the light passes through a transparent medium...
Kynar
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.
lab-on-a-chip
A lab-on-a-chip (LOC) is a miniaturized device that integrates various laboratory functions and capabilities onto a single, compact chip. Also known as microfluidic devices, lab-on-a-chip systems are...
label-free
Label-free refers to a technique or method that does not require the use of additional labels, tags, or markers to detect or identify specific components or entities. In various scientific and...
ladar
->
lidar
light detection and ranging
ladar
laser detection and ranging
ladder diagram
A diagram that shows actual component signals and the basic wiring configuration of a relay logic circuit.
lag
A term applied to an electric charge image in a camera tube that remains for a period of a few frames after its initial formation.
Lambert's absorption law
Transmittance of a solution, or internal transmittance of a transparent solid, is an exponential function of the thickness of the layer.
Lambert's cosine law
Flux per unit solid angle leaving a surface in any direction is proportional to the cosine of the angle between that direction and the normal to the surface. A material that obeys Lambert's cosine...
lambertian emitter
An optical source that has a luminous distribution that is uniform for all directions.
lambertian source plane
In optics, a plane that emits a flux proportional to the cosine of the angle of the normal; dense opal glass is an example.
lambertian surface
A perfectly diffusing surface; the intensity of the light emanating in a given direction from any small surface component is proportional to the cosine of the angle of the normal to the surface. The...
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Photonics Dictionary
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