Photonics Dictionary

A coating made up of particular birefringent materials having polarizing properties. It may be used, in some cases, to replace Polaroid or polarizing prisms.

A filter that polarizes light passing through it. It is possible to fabricate sheets of plastic or gelatin that contain birefringent crystals so oriented as to pass only polarized light. Such sheets...

A device that is used to produce or analyze plane-polarized light. It may be a Nicol prism or some other form of calcite prism or a polarizing filter.

An optical instrument, generally a polarizing microscope, that is used to determine the interference figures and optical axis of a sample crystal. Also called a hodoscope.

A beamsplitter is an optical device used to divide a beam of light into two or more separate beams, typically by reflecting a portion of the incident light while transmitting the remainder....

Birefringence is an optical property of certain materials that causes them to exhibit different refractive indices for light of different polarizations. In other words, when light passes through a...

A filter that transmits light in a series of sharp, widely spaced wavelength bands by its sandwich construction of alternating layers of polarizing films and plates cut from birefringent crystal.

A spectrophotometer having a pair of identical collimators with two Glan polarizing prisms, one fixed in azimuth and the other rotatable, set in one collimator. A Brace prism serves as the dispersive...

A doubly refracting mineral used to produce polarizing prisms. It is uniaxial negative and in the trigonal division of the hexagonal system of crystals. Its indices are e = 1.486, w = 1.658; its...

A solid with a structure that exhibits a basically symmetrical and geometrical arrangement. A crystal may already possess this structure, or it may acquire it through mechanical means. More than 50...

A polarizer that consists of dichroic polarizing material embedded in a plastic sheet, and that transmits light that is almost completely plane polarized with an intensity that is half that of the...

An eyepiece used in a polariscope or polarizing microscope to give a comparison view of the same object under illumination by the two complementary rays of polarized light.

A spectrometer equipped with polarizing prisms and retardation plates that is used in the analysis of elliptically polarized light, mostly in the study of thin, evaporated films.

The ratio of the power of a plane-polarized beam that is transmitted through a polarizer placed in its path with its polarizing axis parallel to the beam's plane, as compared with the transmitted...

A polarizing prism formed from calcite that is like the Nicol prism but has the two parts divided by a thin air-film and cut to such angles that the extraordinary beam will be transmitted and the...

A piece of uniform birefringent material placed at a 45° angle to the plane of polarization in a polarizing microscope to indicate changes in color caused by interference when a birefringent...

A type of birefringent polarizing prism that transmits the extraordinary ray and removes the ordinary ray through total internal reflection. It consists of two calcite prisms with an air gap...

In a camera, the movement of one or more lenses behind the front lens, rather than of the front lens itself, to bring the subject into focus. Because internal focusing does not require the front lens...

Measures the refractive indices axially from the fiber profile. Microscopy technique provides an interferogram with high contrast with demonstrated improvements in relation to the Pluta two-beam...

Laser optics refers to a broad category of optical components and systems designed for manipulating and controlling laser light. Laser optics play a crucial role in shaping the characteristics of...

A Laurent polarimeter is an instrument used in optics for measuring the rotation of plane-polarized light caused by optically active substances. Optical rotation, also known as optical activity, is a...

Linear polarization refers to the polarization state of light where the electric field oscillates in a single plane as the light propagates through space. In other words, the electric field vector of...

An immersion liquid used to treat polarizing filters to eliminate the effects of surface variations and to minimize the optical path difference between that part of the spectrum that passes through...

A law that uses the square of the cosine between the plane of polarization of a beam of plane-polarized light and the plane of polarization of a polarizing element to calculate the intensity of the...

A structure consisting of a thin film of liquid crystal sandwiched between light-polarizing filters that have received a surface lubricant. Depending on motion, the transducer acts as a highly...

Polarization refers to the orientation of oscillations in a transverse wave, such as light waves, radio waves, or other electromagnetic waves. In simpler terms, it describes the direction in which...

A polarizing prism assembly made up of two cemented calcite halves. The prism transmits the ordinary ray without deviation, while the extraordinary ray is deviated to accomplish the polarization.

A polarizing beamsplitting prism similar in design to the Rochon prism. However, the Senarmont transmits the extraordinary ray without deviation and deviates the ordinary ray due to the orientation...

A naturally occurring crystalline mineral that has the property of polarizing transmitted light. It is little used now that the Polaroid sheet is available.

A polarizing prism consisting of two calcite prisms cemented such that they deviate the two emerging beams (which are mutually perpendicularly polarized) by nearly equal amounts in opposite...