Photonics Dictionary: S

Sapphire crystal refers to a transparent, single-crystal form of aluminum oxide (Al2O3) known as corundum. It is one of the hardest known materials, second only to diamond on the Mohs scale of...

A nonlinear label-free imaging technique commonly used during surgical procedures for the visualization of collagen fibers and muscle tissue (myosin) with submillimeter resolution. During the...

Second-order nonlinear optical properties refer to a class of phenomena exhibited by certain materials in response to intense light, typically in the realm of optics and photonics. Nonlinear optical...

Selective laser melting (SLM) is an additive manufacturing (AM) or 3D printing technology that belongs to the powder bed fusion category. SLM is primarily used for metal additive manufacturing, where...

Single-molecule Förster resonance energy transfer (smFRET) is a specialized technique in biophysics and molecular biology used to study the distances and dynamic interactions between two...

A singlet lens is an optical lens made from a single piece of material, typically glass or plastic, with one or both surfaces being spherical or aspherical. It is the most basic type of lens used in...

Sisyphus cooling is a technique used in atomic physics to achieve ultracold temperatures of atoms or molecules by exploiting the periodic motion of particles in optical traps or lattices. The name...

A spaser (surface plasmon amplification by stimulated emission of radiation) is a nanoscale device that generates coherent optical radiation at nanometer-scale dimensions. It is analogous to a laser...

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...

Refers to the variety of techniques that use the interference pattern produced by laser light diffusely reflected by an object. There are two basic techniques: direct laser photography, used when...

Spectral flow cytometry is an advanced flow cytometry technique that expands the capabilities of traditional flow cytometry by utilizing spectral information from fluorochromes to enhance...

A spheric lens, also known as a spherical lens, is a type of optical lens with at least one surface that is part of a sphere. This means that the lens surface is curved in a symmetrical manner,...

An instrument that divides a single laser beam in two and uses one half as a sensing beam and the other as a reference beam, then recombines the two and measures any phase shift between them. The...

A laser resonator in which a mode oscillating between the mirrors will converge upon the laser's longitudinal axis.

STED microscopy, or stimulated emission depletion microscopy, is a superresolution imaging technique in fluorescence microscopy that surpasses the diffraction limit, enabling the visualization of...

A method of creating real three-dimensional models by using lasers driven by CAD software. In contrast to the normal practice of removing material, this process polymerizes a liquid to quickly...

A streak camera is a specialized instrument used to capture and analyze ultrafast phenomena, such as extremely short pulses of light or rapidly changing events. Unlike traditional cameras that...

Observed phenomenon in laser pulses in which a large number of excited electrons are created and in which multiphoton processes have produced seed electrons, and excited neutral atoms are...

Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) is an analytical technique that combines the principles of Raman spectroscopy with the enhancement provided by nanostructured metallic surfaces. Raman...

Swept-source optical coherence tomography is an imaging technique used in medical diagnostics, particularly in ophthalmology, to visualize and analyze the internal structures of biological tissues,...

A swept-source laser, also known as a wavelength-swept laser, is a type of laser that rapidly and continuously changes its emission wavelength over time. This continuous wavelength tuning is achieved...