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Experiment-197

LASER DIFFRACTION USING A RULER

Dr D Sudhakar Rao
Department of Physics, St. Aloysius College, Light House Hill, Mangalore-575001. INDIA.

Email: sr23us@Yahoo.com Abstract Using a He-Ne laser and an engraved scale, spots associated with different order diffraction are observed. By measuring the separations between these spots and varying the distance between the screen and the scale, wavelength of the laser light is determined. The ruler used acts like a reflection grating.

Introduction
Diffraction refers to various phenomena associated with wave propagation, such as bending, spreading and interference of waves passing by an object or an aperture that interrupts the wave propagation. It occurs with any type of wave, including sound waves, water waves, electromagnetic waves such as visible light, x-rays and radio waves. A diffraction grating is an optical device with a surface covered by a regular pattern of parallel lines, typically with a distance between the lines comparable to the wavelength of the light. Such gratings can be either transparent or reflective. A fundamental property of gratings is that the angle of deviation of the diffracted beams depends on the wavelength of the incident light. When a beam is incident on a grating with an angle i, it is diffracted into several beams. The beam that corresponds to direct transmission or specular reflection in the case of a reflection grating, is called the zero order beam and is denoted m = 0. The other orders correspond to diffraction angles which are represented by non-zero integers, m. For a groove period d, such as the separation between the markings on a ruler and an incident wavelengh , the grating equation gives the value of the diffracted angle m in the order m as [1] d (sin m+ sin i ) = m 1

m can be positive or negative, resulting in diffracted orders on both sides of the zero order beam. The grating equation shows that the angles of the diffracted orders depend only on the period of the grooves and not on their shape. By controlling the cross-sectional profile of the grooves, it is possible to concentrate most of the diffracted energy in a particular order for a given wavelength. The space between the markings etched on a metal ruler may act as a reflection grating. A diffraction pattern is formed when light waves striking adjacent spaces interfere with one another as shown in Figure-1. Constructive interference occurs when the path difference for the two waves is an integral number of wavelengths i.e., n, where n is an integer and is the wavelength of the light as shown in Figure-2.

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Figure-1: Reflection of two light rays and formation interference spot

Figure-2: Reflected rays and their path differences The path difference D = d (sin i-sin m) 2

The angles i and m are difficult to measure directly, but they can be calculated from the measured quantities. Figure-3 shows the formation of diffraction pattern. o is the angle between the horizontal and the zero order spot and m is the angle between the horizontal and the mth order spot.
Ym m t h order spo t

Y1 1 st order spot

m
1

Y 0 t h o rder sp ot 0

Laser
M et al scale

i
0

Figure-3: Laser reflection from scale and formation of reflection spots

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With tan o =

yo y and tan m = m D D

the values of i and m can be expressed in terms of o and m as

i = 90- o 2
m 2

m =90-

which gives,

n = d [sin (90- o ) sin (90- m ) 2 2

or m= d[cos o -cos m ] 2 2

An alternative expression can be found by expressing the angle in radians and using the approximation Cos = 1x2 2!

Which is the first term of a series expansion for cos (x). Therefore, the approximate equation can be written as:

2 2 d 2 2 m= 1 o 1 m = m o 2 2 2

)
yo y , and tan m m = m . Substituting in D D

Since for small angles, tan tan o o = (2) we can write,

m =

d 2 D2

2 (y 2 m yo )

Wavelength of the light used

d 2 D2

2 (y 2 m yo )

Apparatus Used
He-Ne laser, engraved foot scale, White screen, meter scale. The complete experimental setup is shown in Figure-4.

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Figure-4: Experimental set-up for laser reflection grating

Experimental Procedure
1. Laser is mounted on its stand and placed on a table about 3-4 meters from a white wall. A 2X1 size laminate sheet is used as screen, which is placed very close to the wall. 2. An engraved metal scale is placed horizontally at 6-9 inches from the laser source as shown in the experimental set-up in Figure-4. At this position the scale makes a small angle with the laser beam. 3. Distance between two graduation markings on the scale (Distance between the markings on the ruler) d = 1 mm is noted 4. By adjusting the position of the scale the laser beam is focused on the engraved millimeter graduations of the scale as shown in Figure-5. 5. The position of the scale is adjusted to get well-defined diffraction pattern as shown in Figure-5. 6. The various spots in the diffraction pattern are identified with reference to Figure-3 and Yo, Y1, Y2 Ym spots are marked on the laminate sheet screen using a permanent marker pen. The brightest spot in diffraction pattern is the 0th order spot. (Second spot from bottom in Figure-6). The exact distance between the screen and the laser beam on the scale is measured. This is the distance D = 2 m 7. The metal scale is now removed and the direct laser beam position on the screen is also marked. All the distances are measured with respect to direct ray.

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8. Now the laminate screen is containing various positions of the spots marked on it is removed and measurements are made. Distance of the 0th order spot from the direct ray position Y0 = 0.35 m

Figure-5: Laser spot falling on the engraved portion of the metal scale
9. Distances of between direct ray position and all the diffraction spots marked on the laminate sheet are measured as shown in Figure-7. The readings obtained are tabulated in Table-1.

Figure-6: Diffraction pattern Bright Spot (second from bottom is Y0)

10. Wavelength of the laser used is calculated using the equation-4 for different order diffraction spots.

d 2 D2

2 (y 2 m y o ) = 1x10

0.357 2 - 0.35 2 ( ) = 0.000125(0.004949) = 618nm 1 2x2 2

-3

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11. The experiment is repeated by changing the distance between screen and scale position (D). The readings obtained are tabulated in Tables 2 and 3 for D =3 and D = 4m respectively.

Observations
Table-1 Order (m) 1 2 3 4 5 6 Distance ym (m) Wavelength (nm) 0.357 618.6 0.364 624.7* 0.3705 615.4 0.377 613.4 0.3835 614.3 0.390 616.7 615.8 Average Diffraction spot distances and wavelength for D=2m
* not taken while averaging

Order (m) 1 2 3 4 5 6

Table-2 Distance ym (m) Wavelength (nm) 0.4585 628.1* 0.470 610.7 0.482 618.7 0.493 612.9 0.504 612.2 0.515 613.9 613.6 Average Diffraction spot distances and wavelength for D=3m Distance of the 0th order, Y0 = 0.446 m Table-3 Distance ym (m) Wavelength (nm) 0.5675 611.1 0.585 620.7 0.6015 617.7 0.618 620.5 0.634 621.6 0.649 618.2 618.3 Average Diffraction spot distances and wavelength for D=4m Distance of the 0th order, Y0 = 0.55 m

Order (m) 1 2 3 4 5 6

Figure-7: Laser diffraction spots marked for measurements.

Spot D (rightmost) is direct ray position

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Results
The wavelength determined are tabulated in Table-4

Table-4 Distance between screen and scale D (m) 2 3 4 Average wavelength of He-Neon Laser Experimental results

Wavelength (nm) 615.8 Standard value 613.6 632 618.3 615.9

References
[1] R S Sirohi, A course of Experiments with He-Ne Laser, Page-48.

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