SYMBOLS AND UNITS
Roman Symbols and Acronyms
a = Radius of an aperture or fiber [m]; also, Radius of a spherical scattering particle [m]; also, Radius of a circle [m]; also, Distance between locations [m]; also, Lattice constant [m]; also, Length of a thin metallic rod [m]; also, Chirp parameter for an optical pulse
a0 = Bohr radius (radius of ground state of Bohr hydrogen atom; a0 ≈ 0.53 Å) [m]
α = Complex amplitude or magnitude of an optical wave; also, Normalized complex amplitude of an optical field (|α|2 = photon-flux density)
a = Normalized field amplitude in a cavity (|a|2 = field energy in units of photon number)
a = Acceleration of a carrier [m · s−2]
a = Primitive vector defining a lattice unit cell [m]
a = Complex-amplitude vector
A = Complex envelope of a monochromatic plane wave; also, Pulse amplitude
A(r) = Complex envelope of a monochromatic wave
A(ν) = Fourier transform of the complex envelope of an optical pulse
A = Complex vector envelope of a monochromatic plane wave; also, Vector potential [V·s·m−1]
𝒜 = Absorbance
𝒜(r, t)= Complex envelope of a polychromatic (e.g., pulsed) wave
𝒜(t)= Complex envelope of an optical pulse
A = Area [m2]; also, Element of the ABCD ray-transfer and wave-transfer matrices M
Ac = Coherence area [m2]
Aij = Element of Jacobian transformation matrix
Ar = Relative atomic mass
Ai
= Airy function
A = Jacobian transformation matrix
𝔸 = ...
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