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borescope

A device for the internal inspection of hard-to-get-at mechanical parts, such as rifle barrels, sewer pipes, oil wells, or gas mains. The long narrow tube used contains a telescope system with as...

Bragg grating

A filter that separates light into many colors via Bragg's law. Generally refers to a fiber Bragg grating used in optical communications to separate wavelengths.

breakout cable

A breakout cable, also known as a fan-out cable or breakout assembly, is a type of cable that combines multiple individual cables into a single, larger cable. The breakout cable is designed to...

ceramics

In optics and photonics, ceramics refer to advanced ceramic materials that possess unique optical properties, making them suitable for various applications involving the manipulation and control of...

chalcogenide

Chalcogenide refers to a class of compounds containing elements from group 16 of the periodic table, which includes sulfur (S), selenium (Se), and tellurium (Te). These elements are known as...

fiber optic transceiver

A fiber optic transceiver, often simply referred to as an "optical transceiver," is a device used in fiber optic communications to transmit and receive data over optical fibers. It integrates both a...

fiber-linked array image formatter

A wide-field multiobject spectroscopy system used in astronomy, in which a bundle of low-loss optical fibers positioned on the target images is rearranged at its other end into a linear array along...

MEL

many-element laser; maximum excess loss (MEL) — the many element laser is a laser unit that consists of N like elements of active materials for support with the mode selection of the laser output. The mode selection properties of a many element laser have been experimentally exploited with as many as 10 like elements. Maximum excess loss is the maximum power lost within a give system (typically a fiber optic communication system) including scattering, dispersion, absorption and coupling loss.

multifiber cable

Fiber optic cable bearing many fibers independently sheathed and capable of carrying unrelated signals. They often surround a central strength member, and can be either loose- or tight-buffered. One...

nonlinear optical materials

Nonlinear optical materials are substances that exhibit optical properties that are not linearly proportional to the intensity of incident light. In other words, these materials produce optical...

nonlinear polarization

Nonlinear polarization refers to the phenomenon where the polarization of a material responds nonlinearly to an applied electric field. In linear systems, the polarization of a material is directly...

photonic crystals

Photonic crystals are artificial structures or materials designed to manipulate and control the flow of light in a manner analogous to how semiconductors control the flow of electrons. Photonic...

reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexer

A reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexer (ROADM) is a key component in wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) optical communication networks. It allows for flexible and dynamic routing of...

Photonics Dictionary