ETA PTS photonics technician specialist exam guide exam help

ETA Photonics Technician Specialist (PTS) is an ETA International certification for technicians who use operator-level photonics skills plus higher-level optics, photonics physics, and technology. ETA describes PTS candidates as working in research and development laboratories, product development, test, and production teams for OEMs of lasers, optics, photonics components and systems, or field service roles for manufacturers and organizations that use laser, optics, and photonics systems.

ETA Press lists PTS as a stand-alone certification with maintenance required, a 4-year term, hands-on required, 297 questions, a 75% passing score, and 2 hours allowed to test; ETA also states that the knowledge component comprises four separate exams that must be taken within a 2-year period. Preparation should cover PTO-level topics plus specialist-level applied mathematics, geometry, trigonometry, surface area and volume, photons, ray tracing, Bragg's law, birefringence, Q-switching, nonlinear optics, harmonic generation, mixing, beam control with polarizers, attenuators, beam switches, Faraday rotators and beamsplitters, coating materials, laser damage characteristics, ANSI Z136.1 safety, service with defeated interlocks, operation and troubleshooting of at least four laser types and their electronic, optical, and cooling subsystems, power density, beam quality factor, interferometer setup and alignment, photodetector circuits, laser/light source/detector specifications, electro-optic and acousto-optic modulators, fiber Bragg gratings, focal plane arrays, interferogram evaluation, wavefront fitting, wavefront aberration measurement, digital circuit analysis with probes, pulsers, logic analyzers, oscilloscopes, counters and DMMs, calibrated instruments, soldering to IPC standards, circuit diagrams, optical drawings, CAD drawings, project constraints, and schematic preparation.