The lock-in amplifier is an electronic circuit used to measure weak sinusoidal signals contaminated by noise. It consists of four main stages: modulation, selective amplification, synchronous demodulation, and low-pass filtering. The key components are a linear amplifier, multiplier, reference generator, phase shifter, very narrow low-pass filter, peak detector, and voltage display unit. It amplifies the target signal, multiplies it with a reference signal of the same frequency, and filters out noise to isolate the signal for detection.