DISCUSSION

The Michelson interferometer produces interference fringes by splitting a beam of monochromatic light so that one beam strikes a fixed mirror and the other a movable mirror. When the reflected beams are brought back together, an interference pattern results as shown below.

Precise distance measurements can be made with the Michelson interferometer by moving the mirror and counting the interference fringes which move by a reference point. The distance d associated with n fringes is d=n/2.Measurements of wavelength and index of refraction can be found this way.In this lab experiments were carried out in order to find the wavelength of the helium neon laser used and the index of refraction of glass and air. In experiment the wavelength of the laser used was determined.This was done by moving the adjustable mirror until twenty fringes collapsed and noting the distance moved for the 20 fringes to collapse.This was done 5 times and for each time the wavelength of the laser was found using the equation d=n/2 and then the average wavelength found.From the results obtained and calculations done,the average wavelength was found to be 640nm.This was close to the theoretical value of 632nm which showed to be fairly accurate. In experiment 2, the index of refraction of air was determined.A vacuum cell was placed infront the fixed mirror and a pump connected to it.Air was pumped into the chamber applying 0-26 cm Hg of pressure in intervals of 2 each time recording the number of fringes collapsed.A graph of fringe number vs pressure was then plotted.From the graph,the index of refraction of air at atmospheric pressure was found to be 1.0009.This was fairly close to the theoretical value of 1.000293.This valued showed to be fairly accurate. In experiment 3 the index of refraction of glass was found.This wa done by placing a glass block infront the moveable mirror and rotating it throung an angle of 10 degrees and recording the number of fringes collapsed when being moved.Using the equation from theory to calculate index of refraction of glass,it was found to be 1.29.This value was clse to the theoretical value of 1.5 and showed to be accurate. The interferometer works on the principle of interference.Interference occurs when two waves meet and they superimpose to produce a wave of greater or lower amplitude depending on the phase of the two waves.A beam of monochromatic light passes through a beam spliiter which is partially silvered where it splits into two beams,one travelling straight through to an adjustable mirror where it is reflected back and the other is bent through 90 degrees to a moveable mirror and reflected back.These

two beams meet ,recombine and interefere with eachother and produce an interference pattern of bright and dark concentric circles.For interference to occur certain conditions of coherence must be met.Coherence arises from the stimulated emission process which provides the amplification of the laser light. Since a common stimulus triggers the emission events which provide the amplified light, the emitted photons are "in step" and have a definite phase relation to each other. This coherence is described in terms of temporal coherence and spatial coherence.When a wave is coherent with itself, this is known as temporal coherence.This is the case in the michelson interferometer when the beam splits into two and is then recombined.If the two waves are in phase with eachother,they combine to produce a wave of greater amplitude resulting in the bright circular fringes seen.This is known as constructive interference.If the two waves are out of phase then the waves cancel out and produce dark circular fringes.This is destructive interference.Light that has the saem energy and thus the saem wavelength is said ti be monochromatic.Since all the photons of the laser light comes from the same stimulated emission, their energies and wavelength will be the same. The Michelson interferometer uses a collimated laser source and has high directionality. The mirrors placed at opposite ends of a laser cavity enables the beam to travel back and forth in order to gain intensity by the stimulated emission of more photons at the same wavelength, which results in increased amplification due to the longer path length through the medium. The multiple reflections also produce a well-collimated beam, because only photons traveling parallel to the cavity walls will be reflected from both mirrors. If the light is the slightest bit off axis, it will be lost from the beam. The high degree of collimation arises from the fact that the cavity of the laser has very nearly parallel front and back mirrors, which constrain the final laser beam to a path, which is perpendicular to those mirrors. Collimation refers to the degree to which the beam remains parallel with distance. A perfectly collimated beam would have parallel sides and would never expand at all. Its divergence angle would be exactly zero. There are different types of interferometer developed.One such interferometer is the fabry-perot.The fabry-perot interferometer consisits of an etalon