Encyclopedia … the photonics community’s trusted resource!

Custom Search in the Encyclopedia

This page explains how to set up intelligent full-text searches in the RP Photonics Encyclopedia (and related pages) directly from your web browser's address bar.

What You Will Get

Once you have set it up as explained below: Instead of first going to the RP Photonics website and entering a search term there, you can enter something like

@rp fiber laser

in the address bar of your browser, and it will search for "fiber laser" in the RP Photonics Encyclopedia, the Photonics Spotlight, our tutorials and case studies.

As we have an AI-powered semantic search, you can even enter technical questions, for example:

@rp How to minimize the pulse duration of a Q-switched laser?

Privacy notice: If you perform a search, your search inputs (but not your IP address) will be transmitted to servers of OpenAI, Google Gemini and Pinecone, where our privacy standards are not met. Therefore, please do not enter any sensitive data here, especially no data that could identify you personally.

How to Set Up

Setting this up takes less than a minute. Use the URL below for all browsers:

https://www.rp-photonics.com/encyclopedia_search.html?q=%s

Setup guides for common web browsers:

Chrome, Brave, & Chromium Browsers

  • Open Settings and select Search engine → Manage search engines and site search.
  • Under "Site search", click Add.
  • Set the name to "RP Photonics", the shortcut to @rp, and paste the URL above.

Firefox

  • Go to Settings → Search and scroll down to Search Shortcuts.
  • Click Add.
  • Enter "RP Photonics", use @rp as the keyword, and paste the URL above.

Microsoft Edge

Settings → Privacy, search and services → Address bar and search → Manage search engines. Add a new entry using the URL and shortcut above.

Safari

This browser does not natively support custom search keywords, but you can use a third-party extension like Shortcuts.