Photonics Dictionary

An active medium is a material or substance used in various optical devices and systems, where it plays a critical role in amplifying light or producing laser beams through the process of stimulated...

Chirped pulse amplification (CPA) is a technique used in laser physics to amplify ultrashort laser pulses to high energies without causing damage to the amplifying medium. The method was first...

Dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) is an optical communication technique used to increase the data-carrying capacity of optical fiber networks by simultaneously transmitting multiple...

Double-clad fiber (DCF) is a specialized optical fiber that features two concentric cladding layers surrounding a core. The design of double-clad fibers allows them to be used in various...

Dual-chirped optical parametric amplification (DC-OPA) is an advanced technique in ultrafast laser technology used to amplify femtosecond laser pulses to extremely high energies while maintaining...

An optical fiber that can be used to amplify an optical input. Erbium rare earth ions are added to the fiber core material as a dopant in typical levels of a few hundred parts per million. The fiber...

An erbium-doped fiber laser (EDFL) is a type of laser that uses an optical fiber doped with erbium ions (Er³?) as the gain medium. These lasers are widely used in telecommunications, medical...

A fiber laser is a type of laser in which the active gain medium is an optical fiber doped with rare-earth ions such as erbium, ytterbium, or neodymium. Fiber lasers generate coherent light through...

Gallium nitride (GaN) is a compound made up of gallium (Ga) and nitrogen (N). It is a wide-bandgap semiconductor material that exhibits unique electrical and optical properties. Gallium nitride is...

Harmonic generation refers to a nonlinear optical process in which incoming photons interact with a material and produce new photons at integer multiples of the frequency of the incoming photons....

In semiconductor physics and materials science, the term "III-V materials" refers to compounds composed of elements from group III and group V of the periodic table. More specifically, these...

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...

Optoelectronics is a branch of electronics that focuses on the study and application of devices and systems that use light and its interactions with different materials. The term "optoelectronics" is...

A device using a parametric amplifier inside a resonant optical cavity to generate a frequency-tunable coherent beam of light from an intense laser beam of fixed frequency. This device is tuned by...

A pump laser is a type of laser used to provide the necessary energy to the gain medium of another laser or laser system, initiating the process of stimulated emission and producing laser light. The...

Rare earth dopants refer to elements from the lanthanide series, also known as rare earth elements, that are intentionally introduced into the crystal lattice of a material to modify its properties....

A ytterbium laser is a type of solid-state laser that employs ytterbium ions (Yb³?) as the dopant in the gain medium. These lasers are known for their high efficiency, broad absorption and...