Pockels effect
Efecto Pockels
- Date
- 1893 · confidence high
- Place
- Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
- Credited to
- Friedrich Carl Alwin Pockels
- Field
- Communication
What was discovered
A linear variation in a crystal's refractive index in response to an applied electric field, discovered by German physicist Friedrich Pockels.
What it led to
- Electro-optic modulators and Q-switched lasers
- High-speed optical communications
- Precision optical instrumentation
- Nonlinear crystals in photonics