Photonics Dictionary: S

Also called scanning laser acoustic microscope. A device that uses high-frequency ultrasound waves to penetrate surfaces. A scanning laser beam is used as a detector, which transmits information...

1. The variation in intensity of a light beam as it travels through the atmosphere. 2. In radiation physics, a light flash formed by an ionizing event in a phosphor; a flash formed when rapidly...

A self-interference effect that generates random patterns; secondary speckle pattern (SSP) typically occurs in diffuse reflections of a laser on paper, white paint or rough surfaces. By tracking both...

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...

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 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 gelatinous fluid that can be used as a porous thin-film coating for optical components, including laser beam collimators, or as a protective coating for glass and crystalline materials.

A solid-state laser is a type of laser that uses a solid gain medium (as opposed to a liquid or gas) to produce coherent light. The term "solid-state" refers to the fact that the active medium, where...

The diagnostic procedure that uses ultrasonic energy to probe the body and, with the help of laser beams, a reflecting membrane to produce a three-dimensional picture.

The maintenance of a fixed-phase relationship across the full diameter of a cross section of a laser beam.

1. Generally, an emulsion mask having a clean annular region in an otherwise opaque region. It is designed to eliminate undesired information. 2. A pinhole in a metal plate, placed at a focal plane...

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...

Also known as transverse mode. The configurations of energy storage, relative to the structure of a laser resonator, that define the relative intensity distribution of the laser beam.

In laser systems, the granular effect that is noted when observing the expanded cross section of a laser beam.

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...

The degree to which a laser beam is aligned parallel to the housing 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...

Light from a pulsed laser focused into nonsaturable absorbing fluid that generates a strongly backscattered light beam with a frequency higher than that of the incident light.

Superresolution refers to the enhancement or improvement of the spatial resolution beyond the conventional limits imposed by the diffraction of light. In the context of imaging, it is a set of...

(SALI) A type of spectroscopy in which neutral atoms or molecules are ionized by an excimer laser beam and then measured by a time-of-flight mass spectrometer.