| fabry-perot interferometer | <apparatus, physics> A type of interferometer with two parallel mirrors (with a variable separation of a few centimetres) arranged so that incoming light is reflected between them multiple times before ultimately being transmitted. Useful in spectroscopy because it gives very good frequency resolution without losing too much of the incident signal. (08 Mar 2000) |
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| mach-zender interferometer | <radiobiology> This is a variation of the Michelson interferometer which is used mainly in measuring the spatial variation in the refractive index of a gas (or plasma). A Mach-Zender interferometer uses two semi-transparent mirrors and two fully reflective mirrors located at the corners of a rectangle. The incoming beam is split in two at the first semi-transparent mirror, and the two halves of the beam travel along separate paths around the edge of the rectangle, meeting at the opposite corner. Typically one beam is a control, and the other travels through the system under study. The two beams meet at the second semi-transparent mirror, after which they are mixed together and interfere. (09 Oct 1997) |
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| microwave interferometer | <radiobiology> A microwave interferometer uses radio waves in the microwave frequency (or wavelength) range as the electromagnetic signal. Microwave interferometers are used to measure the line-averaged density of a plasma along the path through which the microwave beam is passed, through phase shifts in the propagated beam. See: interferometer, interferometry. (09 Oct 1997) |
| interferometer | <radiobiology> Device which measures changes in a medium by looking at effects on the interference of two waves which are passed through that medium. See: interferometry, laser interferometer, optical inteferometer, Fabry-Perot interferometer, microwave interferometer. (09 Oct 1997) |
| electron interferometer | An interferometer that employs an electron beam in place of a light beam. (05 Mar 2000) |
| laser interferometer | <radiobiology> An interferometer which uses a laser as a light source. Because of the monochromatic nature and high brightness of laser light, laser interferometers can operate with much longer beam paths and path differences than conventional interferometers. (09 Oct 1997) |