Diffraction

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Diffraction pattern of red laser beam made on a plate after passing a small circular hole in another plate Diffraction refers to various phenomena which occur when a wave encounters an obstacle. In classical physics, the diffraction phenomenon is described as the apparent bending of waves around small obstacles and the spreading out of waves past small openings. Similar effects occur when a light wave travels through a medium with a varying refractive index, or a sound wave travels through one with varying acoustic impedance. Diffraction occurs with all waves, including sound waves, water waves, and electromagnetic waves such as visible light, X-rays and radio waves. As physical objects have wave-like properties (at the atomic level), diffraction also occurs with matter and can be studied according to the principles of quantum mechanics. Italian scientist Francesco Maria Grimaldi coined the word "diffraction" and was the first to record accurate observations of the phenomenon in 1665.[1][2] Richard Feynman[3] wrote: No-one has ever been able to define the difference between interference and diffraction satisfactorily. It is just a question of usage, and there is no specific, important physical difference between them. He suggested that when there are only a few sources, say two, we call it interference, as in Young's slits, but with a large number of sources, the process is labelled diffraction. While diffraction occurs whenever propagating waves encounter such changes, its effects are generally most pronounced for waves whose wavelength is roughly similar to the dimensions of the diffracting objects. If the obstructing object provides multiple, closely spaced openings, a complex pattern of varying intensity can result. This is due to the superposition, or interference,

of different parts of a wave that travels to the observer by different paths (see diffraction grating). The formalism of diffraction can also describe the way in which waves of finite extent propagate in free space. For example, the expanding profile of a laser beam, the beam shape of a radar antenna and the field of view of an ultrasonic transducer can all be analyzed using diffraction equations.

Contents

1 Examples 2 History 3 Mechanism 4 Diffraction of light o 4.1 Single-slit diffraction o 4.2 Diffraction grating o 4.3 Circular aperture o 4.4 General aperture o 4.5 Propagation of a laser beam o 4.6 Diffraction-limited imaging o 4.7 Speckle patterns 5 Patterns 6 Particle diffraction 7 Bragg diffraction 8 Coherence 9 See also 10 References 11 External links

Examples

Solar glory at the steam from hot springs. A glory is an optical phenomenon produced by light backscattered (a combination of diffraction, reflection and refraction) towards its source by a cloud of uniformly sized water droplets.

The effects of diffraction are often seen in everyday life. The most striking examples of diffraction are those that involve light; for example, the closely spaced tracks on a CD or DVD act as a diffraction grating to form the familiar rainbow pattern seen when looking at a disk. This principle can be extended to engineer a grating with a structure such that it will produce any diffraction pattern desired; the hologram on a credit card is an example. Diffraction in the atmosphere by small particles can cause a bright ring to be visible around a bright light source like the sun or the moon. A shadow of a solid object, using light from a compact source, shows small fringes near its edges. The speckle pattern which is observed when laser light falls on an optically rough surface is also a diffraction phenomenon. When deli meat appears to be iridescent, that is diffraction off the meat fibers.[4] All these effects are a consequence of the fact that light propagates as a wave. Diffraction can occur with any kind of wave. Ocean waves diffract around jetties and other obstacles. Sound waves can diffract around objects, which is why one can still hear someone calling even when hiding behind a tree.[5] Diffraction can also be a concern in some technical applications; it sets a fundamental limit to the resolution of a camera, telescope, or microscope.

History

Thomas Young's sketch of two-slit diffraction, which he presented to the Royal Society in 1803. The effects of diffraction of light were first carefully observed and characterized by Francesco Maria Grimaldi, who also coined the term diffraction, from the Latin diffringere, 'to break into pieces', referring to light breaking up into different directions. The results of Grimaldi's observations were published posthumously in 1665.[6][7][8] Isaac Newton studied these effects and attributed them to inflexion of light rays. James Gregory (16381675) observed the diffraction patterns caused by a bird feather, which was effectively the first diffraction grating to be discovered.[9] Thomas Young performed a celebrated experiment in 1803 demonstrating interference from two closely spaced slits.[10] Explaining his results by interference of the waves emanating from the two different slits, he deduced that light must propagate as waves. AugustinJean Fresnel did more definitive studies and calculations of diffraction, made public in 1815[11] and 1818,[12] and thereby gave great support to the wave theory of light that had been advanced by Christiaan Huygens[13] and reinvigorated by Young, against Newton's particle theory.

Mechanism

Photograph of single-slit diffraction in a circular ripple tank Diffraction arises because of the way in which waves propagate; this is described by the HuygensFresnel principle and the principle of superposition of waves. The propagation of a wave can be visualized by considering every point on a wavefront as a point source for a secondary spherical wave. The wave displacement at any subsequent point is the sum of these secondary waves. When waves are added together, their sum is determined by the relative phases as well as the amplitudes of the individual waves so that the summed amplitude of the waves can have any value between zero and the sum of the individual amplitudes. Hence, diffraction patterns usually have a series of maxima and minima. There are various analytical models which allow the diffracted field to be calculated, including the Kirchhoff-Fresnel diffraction equation which is derived from wave equation, the Fraunhofer diffraction approximation of the Kirchhoff equation which applies to the far field and the Fresnel diffraction approximation which applies to the near field. Most configurations cannot be solved analytically, but can yield numerical solutions through finite element and boundary element methods. It is possible to obtain a qualitative understanding of many diffraction phenomena by considering how the relative phases of the individual secondary wave sources vary, and in particular, the conditions in which the phase difference equals half a cycle in which case waves will cancel one another out. The simplest descriptions of diffraction are those in which the situation can be reduced to a twodimensional problem. For water waves, this is already the case; water waves propagate only on the surface of the water. For light, we can often neglect one direction if the diffracting object extends in that direction over a distance far greater than the wavelength. In the case of light shining through small circular holes we will have to take into account the full three dimensional nature of the problem.

Diffraction of light
Some examples of diffraction of light are considered below.

Single-slit diffraction
Main article: Diffraction formalism

Numerical approximation of diffraction pattern from a slit of width equal to wavelength of an incident plane wave in 3D spectrum visualization

Numerical approximation of diffraction pattern from a slit of width equal to five times the wavelength of an incident plane wave in 3D spectrum visualization

Numerical approximation of diffraction pattern from a slit of width four wavelengths with an incident plane wave. The main central beam, nulls, and phase reversals are apparent.

Graph and image of single-slit diffraction. A long slit of infinitesimal width which is illuminated by light diffracts the light into a series of circular waves and the wavefront which emerges from the slit is a cylindrical wave of uniform intensity. A slit which is wider than a wavelength produces interference effects in the space downstream of the slit. These can be explained by assuming that the slit behaves as though it has a large number of point sources spaced evenly across the width of the slit. The analysis of this system is simplified if we consider light of a single wavelength. If the incident light is coherent, these sources all have the same phase. Light incident at a given point in the space downstream of the slit is made up of contributions from each of these point sources and if the relative phases of these contributions vary by 2 or more, we may expect to find minima and maxima in the diffracted light. Such phase differences are caused by differences in the path lengths over which contributing rays reach the point from the slit. We can find the angle at which a first minimum is obtained in the diffracted light by the following reasoning. The light from a source located at the top edge of the slit interferes destructively with a source located at the middle of the slit, when the path difference between them is equal to /2. Similarly, the source just below the top of the slit will interfere destructively with the source located just below the middle of the slit at the same angle. We can continue this reasoning along the entire height of the slit to conclude that the condition for destructive interference for the entire slit is the same as the condition for destructive interference between two narrow slits a distance apart that is half the width of the slit. The path difference is given by so that the minimum intensity occurs at an angle min given by

where

d is the width of the slit, is the angle of incidence at which the minimum intensity occurs, and is the wavelength of the light

A similar argument can be used to show that if we imagine the slit to be divided into four, six, eight parts, etc., minima are obtained at angles n given by

where

n is an integer other than zero.

There is no such simple argument to enable us to find the maxima of the diffraction pattern. The intensity profile can be calculated using the Fraunhofer diffraction equation as

where

is the intensity at a given angle, is the original intensity, and the unnormalized sinc function above is given by sinc(x) = sin(x)/(x) if x 0, and sinc(0) =1

This analysis applies only to the far field, that is, at a distance much larger than the width of the slit.

2-slit (top) and 5-slit diffraction of red laser light

Diffraction of a red laser using a diffraction grating.

A diffraction pattern of a 633 nm laser through a grid of 150 slits

Diffraction grating
Main article: Diffraction grating A diffraction grating is an optical component with a regular pattern. The form of the light diffracted by a grating depends on the structure of the elements and the number of elements present, but all gratings have intensity maxima at angles m which are given by the grating equation

where

i is the angle at which the light is incident, d is the separation of grating elements, and m is an integer which can be positive or negative.

The light diffracted by a grating is found by summing the light diffracted from each of the elements, and is essentially a convolution of diffraction and interference patterns. The figure shows the light diffracted by 2-element and 5-element gratings where the grating spacings are the same; it can be seen that the maxima are in the same position, but the detailed structures of the intensities are different.

A computer-generated image of an Airy disk.

Computer generated light diffraction pattern from a circular aperture of diameter 0.5 micrometre at a wavelength of 0.6 micrometre (red-light) at distances of 0.1 cm 1 cm in steps of 0.1 cm. One can see the image moving from the Fresnel region into the Fraunhofer region where the Airy pattern is seen.

Circular aperture
Main article: Airy disk The far-field diffraction of a plane wave incident on a circular aperture is often referred to as the Airy Disk. The variation in intensity with angle is given by

, where a is the radius of the circular aperture, k is equal to 2/ and J1 is a Bessel function. The smaller the aperture, the larger the spot size at a given distance, and the greater the divergence of the diffracted beams.

General aperture
The wave that emerges from a point source has amplitude at location r that is given by the solution of the frequency domain wave equation for a point source (The Helmholtz Equation),

where is the 3-dimensional delta function. The delta function has only radial dependence, so the Laplace operator (aka scalar Laplacian) in the spherical coordinate system simplifies to (see del in cylindrical and spherical coordinates)

By direct substitution, the solution to this equation can be readily shown to be the scalar Green's function, which in the spherical coordinate system (and using the physics time convention ) is:

This solution assumes that the delta function source is located at the origin. If the source is located at an arbitrary source point, denoted by the vector and the field point is located at the point , then we may represent the scalar Green's function (for arbitrary source location) as:

Therefore, if an electric field, Einc(x,y) is incident on the aperture, the field produced by this aperture distribution is given by the surface integral:

On the calculation of Fraunhofer region fields where the source point in the aperture is given by the vector

In the far field, wherein the parallel rays approximation can be employed, the Green's function,

simplifies to

as can be seen in the figure to the right (click to enlarge). The expression for the far-zone (Fraunhofer region) field becomes

Now, since

and

the expression for the Fraunhofer region field from a planar aperture now becomes,

Letting,

and

the Fraunhofer region field of the planar aperture assumes the form of a Fourier transform

In the far-field / Fraunhofer region, this becomes the spatial Fourier transform of the aperture distribution. Huygens' principle when applied to an aperture simply says that the far-field diffraction pattern is the spatial Fourier transform of the aperture shape, and this is a direct byproduct of using the parallel-rays approximation, which is identical to doing a plane wave decomposition of the aperture plane fields (see Fourier optics).

Propagation of a laser beam

The way in which the profile of a laser beam changes as it propagates is determined by diffraction. The output mirror of the laser is an aperture, and the subsequent beam shape is determined by that aperture. Hence, the smaller the output beam, the quicker it diverges. Paradoxically, it is possible to reduce the divergence of a laser beam by first expanding it with one convex lens, and then collimating it with a second convex lens whose focal point is coincident with that of the first lens. The resulting beam has a larger aperture, and hence a lower divergence.

Diffraction-limited imaging
Main article: Diffraction-limited system

The Airy disk around each of the stars from the 2.56 m telescope aperture can be seen in this lucky image of the binary star zeta Botis. The ability of an imaging system to resolve detail is ultimately limited by diffraction. This is because a plane wave incident on a circular lens or mirror is diffracted as described above. The light is not focused to a point but forms an Airy disk having a central spot in the focal plane with radius to first null of

where is the wavelength of the light and N is the f-number (focal length divided by diameter) of the imaging optics. In object space, the corresponding angular resolution is

where D is the diameter of the entrance pupil of the imaging lens (e.g., of a telescope's main mirror). Two point sources will each produce an Airy pattern see the photo of a binary star. As the point sources move closer together, the patterns will start to overlap, and ultimately they will merge to form a single pattern, in which case the two point sources cannot be resolved in the image. The Rayleigh criterion specifies that two point sources can be considered to be resolvable if the

separation of the two images is at least the radius of the Airy disk, i.e. if the first minimum of one coincides with the maximum of the other. Thus, the larger the aperture of the lens, and the smaller the wavelength, the finer the resolution of an imaging system. This is why telescopes have very large lenses or mirrors, and why optical microscopes are limited in the detail which they can see.

Speckle patterns
Main article: speckle pattern The speckle pattern which is seen when using a laser pointer is another diffraction phenomenon. It is a result of the superpostion of many waves with different phases, which are produced when a laser beam illuminates a rough surface. They add together to give a resultant wave whose amplitude, and therefore intensity varies randomly.

Patterns

The upper half of this image shows a diffraction pattern of He-Ne laser beam on an elliptic aperture. The lower half is its 2D Fourier transform approximately reconstructing the shape of the aperture. Several qualitative observations can be made of diffraction in general:

The angular spacing of the features in the diffraction pattern is inversely proportional to the dimensions of the object causing the diffraction. In other words: The smaller the

diffracting object, the 'wider' the resulting diffraction pattern, and vice versa. (More precisely, this is true of the sines of the angles.) The diffraction angles are invariant under scaling; that is, they depend only on the ratio of the wavelength to the size of the diffracting object. When the diffracting object has a periodic structure, for example in a diffraction grating, the features generally become sharper. The third figure, for example, shows a comparison of a double-slit pattern with a pattern formed by five slits, both sets of slits having the same spacing, between the center of one slit and the next.

Particle diffraction
See also: neutron diffraction and electron diffraction Quantum theory tells us that every particle exhibits wave properties. In particular, massive particles can interfere and therefore diffract. Diffraction of electrons and neutrons stood as one of the powerful arguments in favor of quantum mechanics. The wavelength associated with a particle is the de Broglie wavelength

where h is Planck's constant and p is the momentum of the particle (mass velocity for slowmoving particles). For most macroscopic objects, this wavelength is so short that it is not meaningful to assign a wavelength to them. A sodium atom traveling at about 30,000 m/s would have a De Broglie wavelength of about 50 pico meters. Because the wavelength for even the smallest of macroscopic objects is extremely small, diffraction of matter waves is only visible for small particles, like electrons, neutrons, atoms and small molecules. The short wavelength of these matter waves makes them ideally suited to study the atomic crystal structure of solids and large molecules like proteins. Relatively larger molecules like buckyballs were also shown to diffract.[14]

Bragg diffraction

Following Bragg's law, each dot (or reflection), in this diffraction pattern forms from the constructive interference of X-rays passing through a crystal. The data can be used to determine the crystal's atomic structure. For more details on this topic, see Bragg diffraction. Diffraction from a three dimensional periodic structure such as atoms in a crystal is called Bragg diffraction. It is similar to what occurs when waves are scattered from a diffraction grating. Bragg diffraction is a consequence of interference between waves reflecting from different crystal planes. The condition of constructive interference is given by Bragg's law:

where is the wavelength, d is the distance between crystal planes, is the angle of the diffracted wave. and m is an integer known as the order of the diffracted beam. Bragg diffraction may be carried out using either light of very short wavelength like X-rays or matter waves like neutrons (and electrons) whose wavelength is on the order of (or much smaller than) the atomic spacing.[15] The pattern produced gives information of the separations of crystallographic planes d, allowing one to deduce the crystal structure. Diffraction contrast, in electron microscopes and x-topography devices in particular, is also a powerful tool for examining individual defects and local strain fields in crystals.

Coherence
Main article: Coherence (physics) The description of diffraction relies on the interference of waves emanating from the same source taking different paths to the same point on a screen. In this description, the difference in phase between waves that took different paths is only dependent on the effective path length.

This does not take into account the fact that waves that arrive at the screen at the same time were emitted by the source at different times. The initial phase with which the source emits waves can change over time in an unpredictable way. This means that waves emitted by the source at times that are too far apart can no longer form a constant interference pattern since the relation between their phases is no longer time independent. The length over which the phase in a beam of light is correlated, is called the coherence length. In order for interference to occur, the path length difference must be smaller than the coherence length. This is sometimes referred to as spectral coherence, as it is related to the presence of different frequency components in the wave. In the case of light emitted by an atomic transition, the coherence length is related to the lifetime of the excited state from which the atom made its transition. If waves are emitted from an extended source, this can lead to incoherence in the transversal direction. When looking at a cross section of a beam of light, the length over which the phase is correlated is called the transverse coherence length. In the case of Young's double slit experiment, this would mean that if

Interference

(wave propagation)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search For interference in radio communications, see Interference (communication). "Interference pattern" redirects here. For Moir patterns, see Moir pattern.

Two-point interference in a ripple tank.

Interference caused by the reflection on a CD In physics, interference is a phenomenon in which two waves superimpose to form a resultant wave of greater or lower amplitude. Interference usually refers to the interaction of waves that are correlated or coherent with each other, either because they come from the same source or because they have the same or nearly the same frequency. Interference effects can be observed with all types of waves, for example, light, radio, acoustic and surface water waves.

Contents

1 Mechanism o 1.1 Between two plane waves o 1.2 Between two spherical waves o 1.3 Multiple beams 2 Optical interference o 2.1 Light source requirements o 2.2 Optical arrangements o 2.3 Applications of optical interferometry 3 Radio interferometry 4 Acoustic interferometry 5 Quantum interference 6 See also 7 References 8 External links

Mechanism

Interference of waves from two point sources.

Magnified-image of coloured interference-pattern in soap-film. The black "holes" are areas where the film is very thin and there is near-total destructive-interference. The principle of superposition of waves states that when two or more propagating waves of like type are incident on the same point, the total displacement at that point is equal to the vector sum of the displacements of the individual waves. If a crest of a wave meets a crest of another wave of the same frequency at the same point, then the magnitude of the displacement is the sum of the individual magnitudes this is constructive interference. If a crest of one wave meets a trough of another wave then the magnitude of the displacements is equal to the difference in the individual magnitudes this is known as destructive interference.

Resultant wave Wave 1 Wave 2 Constructive interference Destructive interference

Constructive interference occurs when the phase difference between the waves is a multiple of 2, whereas destructive interference occurs when the difference is an odd multiple of . If the difference between the phases is intermediate between these two extremes, then the magnitude of the displacement of the summed waves lies between the minimum and maximum values.

Consider, for example, what happens when two identical stones are dropped into a still pool of water at different locations. Each stone generates a circular wave propagating outwards from the point where the stone was dropped. When the two waves overlap, the net displacement at a particular point is the sum of the displacements of the individual waves. At some points, these will be in phase, and will produce a maximum displacement. In other places, the waves will be in anti-phase, and there will be no net displacement at these points. Thus, parts of the surface will be stationarythese are seen in the figure above and to the right as stationary blue-green lines radiating from the center.

Between two plane waves

Geometrical arrangement for two plane wave interference

Interference fringes in overlapping plane waves A simple form of interference pattern is obtained if two plane waves of the same frequency intersect at an angle. Interference is essentially an energy redistribution process. The energy which is lost at the destructive interference is regained at the constructive interference. One wave is travelling horizontally, and the other is travelling downwards at an angle to the first wave. Assuming that the two waves are in phase at the point B, then the relative phase changes along the x-axis. The phase difference at the point A is given by

It can be seen that the two waves are in phase when

, and are half a cycle out of phase when

Constructive interference occurs when the waves are in phase, and destructive interference when they are half a cycle out of phase. Thus, an interference fringe pattern is produced, where the separation of the maxima is

and df is known as the fringe spacing. The fringe spacing increases with increase in wavelength, and with decreasing angle . The fringes are observed wherever the two waves overlap and the fringe spacing is uniform throughout.

Between two spherical waves

Optical interference between two point sources for different wavelengths and source separations A point source produces a spherical wave. If the light from two point sources overlaps, the interference pattern maps out the way in which the phase difference between the two waves varies in space. This depends on the wavelength and on the separation of the point sources. The figure to the right shows interference between two spherical waves. The wavelength increases from top to bottom, and the distance between the sources increases from left to right.

When the plane of observation is far enough away, the fringe pattern will be a series of almost straight lines, since the waves will then be almost planar.

Multiple beams
Interference occurs when several waves are added together provided that the phase differences between them remain constant over the observation time. It is sometimes desirable for several waves of the same frequency and amplitude to sum to zero (that is, interfere destructively, cancel). This is the principle behind, for example, 3-phase power and the diffraction grating. In both of these cases, the result is achieved by uniform spacing of the phases. It is easy to see that a set of waves will cancel if they have the same amplitude and their phases are spaced equally in angle. Using phasors, each wave can be represented as for waves from to , where

. To show that

one merely assumes the converse, then multiplies both sides by The FabryProt interferometer uses interference between multiple reflections. A diffraction grating can be considered to be a multiple-beam interferometer, since the peaks which it produces are generated by interference between the light transmitted by each of the elements in the grating. Feynman suggests that when there are only a few sources, say two, we call it "interference", as in Young's double slit experiment, but with a large number of sources, the process is labelled "diffraction".[1]

Optical interference

Creation of interference fringes by an optical flat on a reflective surface. Light rays from a monochromatic source pass through the glass and reflect off both the bottom surface of the flat and the supporting surface. The tiny gap between the surfaces mean the two reflected rays have different path lengths and interfere when they combine. At locations (b) where the path difference is an even multiple of /2, the waves reinforce. At locations (a) where the path difference is an odd multiple of /2 the waves cancel. Since the gap between the surfaces varies slightly in width at different points, a series of alternating bright and dark bands are seen. Because the frequency of light waves (~1014 Hz) is too high to be detected by currently available detectors, it is possible to observe only the intensity of an optical interference pattern. The intensity of the light at a given point is proportional to the square of the average amplitude of the wave. This can be expressed mathematically as follows. The displacement of the two waves at a point r is:

where A represents the magnitude of the displacement, represents the phase and represents the angular frequency. The displacement of the summed waves is

The intensity of the light at r is given by

This can be expressed in terms of the intensities of the individual waves as

Thus, the interference pattern maps out the difference in phase between the two waves, with maxima occurring when the phase difference is a multiple of 2. If the two beams are of equal intensity, the maxima are four times as bright as the individual beams, and the minima have zero intensity. The two waves must have the same polarization to give rise to interference fringes since it is not possible for waves of different polarizations to cancel one another out or add together. Instead, when waves of different polarization are added together, they give rise to a wave of a different polarization state.

Light source requirements

The discussion above assumes that the waves which interfere with one another are monochromatic, i.e. have a single frequencythis requires that they are infinite in time. This is not, however, either practical or necessary. Two identical waves of finite duration whose frequency is fixed over that period will give rise to an interference pattern while they overlap. Two identical waves which consist of a narrow spectrum of frequency waves of finite duration, will give a series of fringe patterns of slightly differing spacings, and provided the spread of spacings is significantly less than the average fringe spacing, a fringe pattern will again be observed during the time when the two waves overlap. Conventional light sources emit waves of differing frequencies and at different times from different points in the source. If the light is split into two waves and then re-combined, each individual light wave may generate an interference pattern with its other half, but the individual fringe patterns generated will have different phases and spacings, and normally no overall fringe pattern will be observable. However, single-element light sources, such as sodium- or mercuryvapor lamps have emission lines with quite narrow frequency spectra. When these are spatially and colour filtered, and then split into two waves, they can be superimposed to generate interference fringes.[2] All interferometry prior to the invention of the laser was done using such sources and had a wide range of successful applications. A laser beam generally approximates much more closely to a monochromatic source, and it is much more straightforward to generate interference fringes using a laser. The ease with which interference fringes can be observed with a laser beam can sometimes cause problems in that stray reflections may give spurious interference fringes which can result in errors. Normally, a single laser beam is used in interferometry, though interference has been observed using two independent lasers whose frequencies were sufficiently matched to satisfy the phase requirements.[3]

White light interference in a soap bubble It is also possible to observe interference fringes using white light. A white light fringe pattern can be considered to be made up of a 'spectrum' of fringe patterns each of slightly different spacing. If all the fringe patterns are in phase in the centre, then the fringes will increase in size as the wavelength decreases and the summed intensity will show three to four fringes of varying colour. Young describes this very elegantly in his discussion of two slit interference. Some fine examples of white light fringes can be seen here. Since white light fringes are obtained only when the two waves have travelled equal distances from the light source, they can be very useful in interferometry, as they allow the zero path difference fringe to be identified.[4]

Optical arrangements
To generate interference fringes, light from the source has to be divided into two waves which have then to be re-combined. Traditionally, interferometers have been classified as either amplitude-division or wavefront-division systems. In an amplitude-division system, a beam splitter is used to divide the light into two beams travelling in different directions, which are then superimposed to produce the interference pattern. The Michelson interferometer and the Mach-Zehnder interferometer are examples of amplitude-division systems. In wavefront-division systems, the wave is divided in spaceexamples are Young's double slit interferometer and Lloyd's mirror. Interference can also be seen in everyday life. For example, the colours seen in a soap bubble arise from interference of light reflecting off the front and back surfaces of the thin soap film. Depending on the thickness of the film, different colours interfere constructively and destructively.

Applications of optical interferometry

Main article: Optical interferometry Interferometry has played an important role in the advancement of physics, and also has a wide range of applications in physical and engineering measurement.

Thomas Young's double slit interferometer in 1803 demonstrated interference fringes when two small holes were illuminated by light from another small hole which was illuminated by sunlight. Young was able to estimate the wavelength of different colours in the spectrum from the spacing of the fringes. The experiment played a major role in the general acceptance of the wave theory of light.[4] In quantum mechanics, this experiment is considered to demonstrate the inseparability of the wave and particle natures of light and other quantum particles (waveparticle duality). Richard Feynman was fond of saying that all of quantum mechanics can be gleaned from carefully thinking through the implications of this single experiment.[5] The results of the MichelsonMorley experiment, are generally considered to be the first strong evidence against the theory of a luminiferous aether and in favor of special relativity. Interferometry has been used in defining and calibrating length standards. When the metre was defined as the distance between two marks on a platinum-iridium bar, Michelson and Benot used interferometry to measure the wavelength of the red cadmium line in the new standard, and also showed that it could be used as a length standard. Sixty years later, in 1960, the metre in the new SI system was defined to be equal to 1,650,763.73 wavelengths of the orange-red emission line in the electromagnetic spectrum of the krypton-86 atom in a vacuum. This definition was replaced in 1983 by defining the metre as the distance travelled by light in vacuum during a specific time interval. Interferometry is still fundamental in establishing the calibration chain in length measurement. Interferometry is used in the calibration of slip gauges (called gauge blocks in the US) and in coordinate-measuring machines. It is also used in the testing of optical components.[6]

Radio interferometry
Main article: Astronomical interferometer

The Very Large Array, an interferometric array formed from many smaller telescopes, like many larger radio telescopes. In 1946, a technique called astronomical interferometry was developed. Astronomical radio interferometers usually consist either of arrays of parabolic dishes or two-dimensional arrays of omni-directional antennas. All of the telescopes in the array are widely separated and are usually connected together using coaxial cable, waveguide, optical fiber, or other type of transmission

line. Interferometry increases the total signal collected, but its primary purpose is to vastly increase the resolution through a process called Aperture synthesis. This technique works by superposing (interfering) the signal waves from the different telescopes on the principle that waves that coincide with the same phase will add to each other while two waves that have opposite phases will cancel each other out. This creates a combined telescope that is equivalent in resolution (though not in sensitivity) to a single antenna whose diameter is equal to the spacing of the antennas furthest apart in the array.

Acoustic interferometry
An acoustic interferometer is an instrument for measuring the physical characteristics of sound waves in a gas or liquid. It may be used to measure velocity, wavelength, absorption, or impedance. A vibrating crystal creates the ultrasonic waves that are radiated into the medium. The waves strike a reflector placed parallel to the crystal. The waves are then reflected back to the source and measured.

Quantum interference
See also: Quantum version of double-slit experiment

Quantum mechanics
Introduction Glossary History

Background[show] Fundamental concepts[hide] Complementarity Decoherence Nonlocality Quantum state Superposition Tunnelling Uncertainty Wave function Symmetry in quantum mechanics

Experiments[show] Formulations[show] Equations[show] Interpretations[show]

Advanced topics[show] Scientists[show]

v t e

If a system is in state

, its wavefunction is described in Dirac or bra-ket notation as:

where the s specify the different quantum "alternatives" available (technically, they form an eigenvector basis) and the are the probability amplitude coefficients, which are complex numbers. The probability of observing the system making a transition or quantum leap from state new state is the square of the modulus of the scalar or inner product of the two states: to a

where

(as defined above) and similarly

are the coefficients of the final , etc.

state of the system. * is the complex conjugate so that

Now let's consider the situation classically and imagine that the system transited from to via an intermediate state . Then we would classically expect the probability of the two-step transition to be the sum of all the possible intermediate steps. So we would have

, The classical and quantum derivations for the transition probability differ by the presence, in the quantum case, of the extra terms interference between the different ; these extra quantum terms represent intermediate "alternatives". These are consequently

known as the quantum interference terms, or cross terms. This is a purely quantum effect and is a consequence of the non-additivity of the probabilities of quantum alternatives. The interference terms vanish, via the mechanism of quantum decoherence, if the intermediate state is the transverse coherence length is smaller than the spacing between the two slits, the resulting pattern on a screen would look like two single slit diffraction patterns. In the case of particles like electrons, neutrons and atoms, the coherence length is related to the spatial extent of the wave function that describes the particle. For other uses, see Polarization.

Polarization on rubber thread. (Circularlylinearly polarized standing wave.) Polarization (also polarisation) is a property of waves that can oscillate with more than one orientation. Electromagnetic waves, such as light, and gravitational waves exhibit polarization; sound waves in a gas or liquid do not have polarization because the medium vibrates only along the direction in which the waves are travelling. By convention, the polarization of light is described by specifying the orientation of the wave's electric field at a point in space over one period of the oscillation. When light travels in free space, in most cases it propagates as a transverse wavethe polarization is perpendicular to the wave's direction of travel. In this case, the electric field may be oriented in a single direction (linear polarization), or it may rotate as the wave travels (circular or elliptical polarization). In the latter case, the field may rotate in either direction. The direction in which the field rotates is the wave's chirality or handedness. The polarization of an electromagnetic (EM) wave can be more complicated in certain cases. For instance, in a waveguide such as an optical fiber or for radially polarized beams in free space,[1] the fields can have longitudinal as well as transverse components. Such EM waves are either TM or hybrid modes.

For longitudinal waves such as sound waves in fluids, the direction of oscillation is by definition along the direction of travel, so there is no polarization. In a solid medium, however, sound waves can be transverse. In this case, the polarization is associated with the direction of the shear stress in the plane perpendicular to the propagation direction. This is important in seismology. Polarization is significant in areas of science and technology dealing with wave propagation, such as optics, seismology, telecommunications and radar science. The polarization of light can be measured with a polarimeter. A polarizer is a device that affects polarization.

Contents

1 Theory o 1.1 Basics: plane waves o 1.2 Polarization state o 1.3 Unpolarized light o 1.4 Parameterization 1.4.1 S and P Polarization 1.4.2 Parameterization of incoherent or partially polarized radiation o 1.5 Propagation, reflection and scattering 2 Examples and applications o 2.1 In nature and photography o 2.2 Biology o 2.3 Geology o 2.4 Chemistry o 2.5 Astronomy o 2.6 3D movies o 2.7 Communication and radar o 2.8 Materials science o 2.9 Navigation o 2.10 Experiment demonstrating spin induced by polarisation 3 See also 4 Notes and references 5 External links

Theory
Basics: plane waves
The simplest manifestation of polarization to visualize is that of a plane wave, which is a good approximation of most light waves (a plane wave is a wave with infinitely long and wide wavefronts). For plane waves Maxwell's equations, specifically Gauss's laws, impose the transversality requirement that the electric and magnetic field be perpendicular to the direction of propagation and to each other. Conventionally, when considering polarization, the electric field vector is described and the magnetic field is ignored since it is perpendicular to the electric field and proportional to it. The electric field vector of a plane wave may be arbitrarily divided into

two perpendicular components labeled x and y (with z indicating the direction of travel). For a simple harmonic wave, where the amplitude of the electric vector varies in a sinusoidal manner in time, the two components have exactly the same frequency. However, these components have two other defining characteristics that can differ. First, the two components may not have the same amplitude. Second, the two components may not have the same phase, that is they may not reach their maxima and minima at the same time. Mathematically, the electric field of a plane wave can be written as,

or alternatively,

where and are the amplitudes of the x and y directions and between the two components.

is the relative phase

Polarization state
The shape traced out in a fixed plane by the electric vector as such a plane wave passes over it (a Lissajous figure) is a description of the polarization state. The following figures show some examples of the evolution of the electric field vector (black), with time (the vertical axes), at a particular point in space, along with its x and y components (red/left and blue/right), and the path traced by the tip of the vector in the plane (yellow in figure 1&3, purple in figure 2): The same evolution would occur when looking at the electric field at a particular time while evolving the point in space, along the direction opposite to propagationExamples

and applications

In nature and photography

For more details on this topic, see Polarizing filter (Photography).

Effect of a polarizer on reflection from mud flats. In the picture on the left, the polarizer is rotated to transmit the reflections as well as possible; by rotating the polarizer by 90 (picture on the right) almost all specularly reflected sunlight is blocked.

The effects of a polarizing filter on the sky in a photograph. The picture on the right uses the filter. Light reflected by shiny transparent materials is partly or fully polarized, except when the light is perpendicular to the surface. It was through this effect that polarization was first discovered in 1808 by the mathematician tienne-Louis Malus. A polarizing filter, such as a pair of polarizing sunglasses, can be used to observe this effect by rotating the filter while looking through it at the reflection off of a distant horizontal surface. At certain rotation angles, the reflected light will be reduced or eliminated. Polarizing filters remove light polarized at 90 to the filter's polarization axis. If two polarizers are placed atop one another at 90 angles to one another, there is minimal light transmission. Polarization by scattering is observed as light passes through the atmosphere. The scattered light produces the brightness and color in clear skies. This partial polarization of scattered light can be used to darken the sky in photographs, increasing the contrast. This effect is easiest to observe at sunset, on the horizon at a 90 angle from the setting sun. Another easily observed effect is the drastic reduction in brightness of images of the sky and clouds reflected from horizontal surfaces (see Brewster's angle), which is the main reason polarizing filters are often used in sunglasses. Also frequently visible through polarizing sunglasses are rainbow-like patterns caused by colordependent birefringent effects, for example in toughened glass (e.g., car windows) or items made from transparent plastics. The role played by polarization in the operation of liquid crystal displays (LCDs) is also frequently apparent to the wearer of polarizing sunglasses, which may reduce the contrast or even make the display unreadable.

Polarizing sunglasses reveal stress in car window (see text for explanation.) The photograph on the right was taken through polarizing sunglasses and through the rear window of a car. Light from the sky is reflected by the windshield of the other car at an angle,

making it mostly horizontally polarized. The rear window is made of tempered glass. Stress from heat treatment of the glass alters the polarization of light passing through it, like a wave plate. Without this effect, the sunglasses would block the horizontally polarized light reflected from the other car's window. The stress in the rear window, however, changes some of the horizontally polarized light into vertically polarized light that can pass through the glasses. As a result, the regular pattern of the heat treatment becomes visible.

Biology
Many animals are capable of perceiving some of the components of the polarization of light, e.g., linear horizontally polarized light. This is generally used for navigational purposes, since the linear polarization of sky light is always perpendicular to the direction of the sun. This ability is very common among the insects, including bees, which use this information to orient their communicative dances. Polarization sensitivity has also been observed in species of octopus, squid, cuttlefish, and mantis shrimp. In the latter case, one species measures all six orthogonal components of polarization, and is believed to have optimal polarization vision.[8] The rapidly changing, vividly colored skin patterns of cuttlefish, used for communication, also incorporate polarization patterns, and mantis shrimp are known to have polarization selective reflective tissue. Sky polarization was thought to be perceived by pigeons, which was assumed to be one of their aids in homing, but research indicates this is a popular myth.[9] The naked human eye is weakly sensitive to polarization, without the need for intervening filters. Polarized light creates a very faint pattern near the center of the visual field, called Haidinger's brush. This pattern is very difficult to see, but with practice one can learn to detect polarized light with the naked eye.

Geology

Photomicrograph of a volcanic sand grain; upper picture is plane-polarized light, bottom picture is cross-polarized light, scale box at left-center is 0.25 millimeter. The property of (linear) birefringence is widespread in crystalline minerals, and indeed was pivotal in the initial discovery of polarization. In mineralogy, this property is frequently exploited using polarization microscopes, for the purpose of identifying minerals. See optical mineralogy for more details. Shear waves in elastic materials exhibit polarization. These effects are studied as part of the field of seismology, where horizontal and vertical polarizations are termed SH and SV, respectively.

Chemistry
Polarization is principally of importance in chemistry due to circular dichroism and "optical rotation" (circular birefringence) exhibited by optically active (chiral) molecules. It may be measured using polarimetry. The term "polarization" may also refer to the through-bond (inductive or resonant effect) or through-space influence of a nearby functional group on the electronic properties (e.g., dipole moment) of a covalent bond or atom. This concept is based on the formation of an electric dipole within a molecule, which is related to polarization of electromagnetic waves in infrared spectroscopy. Molecules will absorb infrared light if the frequency of the bond vibration is resonant with (identical to) the incident light frequency, where the molecular vibration at hand produces a change in the dipole moment of the molecule. In some nonlinear optical processes, the direction of an oscillating dipole will dictate the polarization of the emitted electromagnetic radiation, as in vibrational sum frequency generation spectroscopy or similar processes. Polarized light does interact with anisotropic materials, which is the basis for birefringence. This is usually seen in crystalline materials and is especially useful in geology (see above). The polarized light is "double refracted", as the refractive index is different for horizontally and vertically polarized light in these materials. This is to say, the polarizability of anisotropic materials is not equivalent in all directions. This anisotropy causes changes in the polarization of the incident beam, and is easily observable using cross-polar microscopy or polarimetry. The optical rotation of chiral compounds (as opposed to achiral compounds that form anisotropic crystals), is derived from circular birefringence. Like linear birefringence described above, circular birefringence is the "double refraction" of circular polarized light.[10]

Astronomy
Main article: Polarization in astronomy In many areas of astronomy, the study of polarized electromagnetic radiation from outer space is of great importance. Although not usually a factor in the thermal radiation of stars, polarization is also present in radiation from coherent astronomical sources (e.g. hydroxyl or methanol masers), and incoherent sources such as the large radio lobes in active galaxies, and pulsar radio radiation (which may, it is speculated, sometimes be coherent), and is also imposed upon

starlight by scattering from interstellar dust. Apart from providing information on sources of radiation and scattering, polarization also probes the interstellar magnetic field via Faraday rotation. The polarization of the cosmic microwave background is being used to study the physics of the very early universe. Synchrotron radiation is inherently polarised. It has been suggested that astronomical sources caused the chirality of biological molecules on Earth.[11]

3D movies
Polarization is also used for some 3D movies, in which the images intended for each eye are either projected from two different projectors with orthogonally oriented polarizing filters or, more typically, from a single projector with time multiplexed polarization (a fast alternating polarization device for successive frames). Polarized 3D glasses with suitable polarized filters ensure that each eye receives only the intended image. Historical stereoscopic projection displays used linear polarization encoding because it was inexpensive and offered good separation. Circular polarization makes left-eye/right-eye separation insensitive to the viewing orientation; circular polarization is used in typical 3-D movie exhibition today, such as the system from RealD. Polarized 3-D only works on screens that maintain polarization (such as silver screens); a normal projection screen would cause depolarization which would void the effect.

Communication and radar

All radio transmitting and receiving antennas are intrinsically polarized, special use[clarification needed] of which is made in radar. Most antennas radiate either horizontal, vertical, or circular polarization although elliptical polarization also exists. The electric field or E-plane determines the polarization or orientation of the radio wave. Vertical polarization is most often used when it is desired to radiate a radio signal in all directions such as widely distributed mobile units. AM and FM radio use vertical polarization, while television uses horizontal polarization. Alternating vertical and horizontal polarization is used on satellite communications (including television satellites), to allow the satellite to carry two separate transmissions on a given frequency, thus doubling the number of channels a customer can receive through one satellite. Electronically controlled birefringent devices such as photoelastic modulators are used in combination with polarizing filters as modulators in fiber optics.

Materials science

Strain in plastic glasses In engineering, the relationship between strain and birefringence motivates the use of polarization in characterizing the distribution of stress and strain in prototypes.

Navigation
Main article: Rayleigh Sky Model Sky polarization has been exploited in the "sky compass", which was used in the 1950s when navigating near the poles of the Earth's magnetic field when neither the sun nor stars were visible (e.g., under daytime cloud or twilight). It has been suggested, controversially, that the Vikings exploited a similar device (the "sunstone") in their extensive expeditions across the North Atlantic in the 9th11th centuries, before the arrival of the magnetic compass in Europe in the 12th century. Related to the sky compass is the "polar clock", invented by Charles Wheatstone in the late 19th century.

Experiment demonstrating spin induced by polarisation

A University of St Andrews team have caused a microscopic bead of calcium carbonate 4 micrometres in diameter to rotate at speeds of up to 600 million revolutions per minute. The bead was levitated in a vacuum by a laser light shone from below - somewhat like a beach ball held up by a jet of water. The laser light exerted a small twist on the levitating sphere, causing it to increase its rate of spin. The spin eventually achieved caused an angular acceleration at the bead surface some one billion times that of gravity on the Earth surface, but which oddly did not lead to the bead's disintegration. [12] .

Chapter 32. Wave optics

Electron microscopes can make images of individual atoms, but why will a visible-light microscope never be able to? Stereo speakers create the illusion of music that comes from a band arranged in your living room, but why doesn't the stereo illusion work with bass notes? Why are computer chip manufacturers investing billions of dollars in equipment to etch chips with x-rays instead of visible light? The answers to all of these questions have to do with the subject of wave optics. So far this book has discussed the interaction of light waves with matter, and its practical applications to optical devices like mirrors, but we have used the ray model of light almost exclusively. Hardly ever have we explicitly made use of the fact that light is an electromagnetic wave. We were able to get away with the simple ray model because the chunks of matter we were discussing, such as lenses and mirrors, were thousands of times larger than a wavelength of light. We now turn to phenomena and devices that can only be understood using the wave model of light.

32.1 Diffraction

a / In this view from overhead, a straight, sinusoidal water wave encounters a barrier with two gaps in it. Strong wave vibration occurs at angles X and Z, but there is none at all at angle Y. (The figure has been retouched from a real photo of water waves. In reality, the waves beyond the barrier would be much weaker than the ones before it, and they would therefore be difficult to see.)

b / This doesn't happen.

c / A practical, low-tech setup for observing diffraction of light.

d / The bottom figure is simply a copy of the middle portion of the top one, scaled up by a factor of two. All the angles are the same. Physically, the angular pattern of the diffraction fringes can't be any different if we scale both and d by the same factor, leaving /d unchanged. Figure a shows a typical problem in wave optics, enacted with water waves. It may seem surprising that we don't get a simple pattern like figure b, but the pattern would only be that simple if the wavelength was hundreds of times shorter than the distance between the gaps in the barrier and the widths of the gaps. Wave optics is a broad subject, but this example will help us to pick out a reasonable set of restrictions to make things more manageable: (1) We restrict ourselves to cases in which a wave travels through a uniform medium, encounters a certain area in which the medium has different properties, and then emerges on the other side into a second uniform region. (2) We assume that the incoming wave is a nice tidy sine-wave pattern with wavefronts that are lines (or, in three dimensions, planes). (3) In figure a we can see that the wave pattern immediately beyond the barrier is rather complex, but farther on it sorts itself out into a set of wedges separated by gaps in which the water is still. We will restrict ourselves to studying the simpler wave patterns that occur farther away, so that the main question of interest is how intense the outgoing wave is at a given angle.

The kind of phenomenon described by restriction (1) is called diffraction. Diffraction can be defined as the behavior of a wave when it encounters an obstacle or a nonuniformity in its medium. In general, diffraction causes a wave to bend around obstacles and make patterns of strong and weak waves radiating out beyond the obstacle. Understanding diffraction is the central problem of wave optics. If you understand diffraction, even the subset of diffraction problems that fall within restrictions (2) and (3), the rest of wave optics is icing on the cake. Diffraction can be used to find the structure of an unknown diffracting object: even if the object is too small to study with ordinary imaging, it may be possible to work backward from the diffraction pattern to learn about the object. The structure of a crystal, for example, can be determined from its x-ray diffraction pattern. Diffraction can also be a bad thing. In a telescope, for example, light waves are diffracted by all the parts of the instrument. This will cause the image of a star to appear fuzzy even when the focus has been adjusted correctly. By understanding diffraction, one can learn how a telescope must be designed in order to reduce this problem --- essentially, it should have the biggest possible diameter. There are two ways in which restriction (2) might commonly be violated. First, the light might be a mixture of wavelengths. If we simply want to observe a diffraction pattern or to use diffraction as a technique for studying the object doing the diffracting (e.g., if the object is too small to see with a microscope), then we can pass the light through a colored filter before diffracting it. A second issue is that light from sources such as the sun or a lightbulb does not consist of a nice neat plane wave, except over very small regions of space. Different parts of the wave are out of step with each other, and the wave is referred to as incoherent. One way of dealing with this is shown in figure c. After filtering to select a certain wavelength of red light, we pass the light through a small pinhole. The region of the light that is intercepted by the pinhole is so small that one part of it is not out of step with another. Beyond the pinhole, light spreads out in a spherical wave; this is analogous to what happens when you speak into one end of a paper towel roll and the sound waves spread out in all directions from the other end. By the time the spherical wave gets to the double slit it has spread out and reduced its curvature, so that we can now think of it as a simple plane wave. If this seems laborious, you may be relieved to know that modern technology gives us an easier way to produce a single-wavelength, coherent beam of light: the laser. The parts of the final image on the screen in c are called diffraction fringes. The center of each fringe is a point of maximum brightness, and halfway between two fringes is a minimum.
Discussion Question

Why would x-rays rather than visible light be used to find the structure of a crystal? Sound waves are used to make images of fetuses in the womb. What would influence the choice of wavelength?

32.2 Scaling of diffraction

This chapter has optics in its title, so it is nominally about light, but we started out with an example involving water waves. Water waves are certainly easier to visualize, but is this a legitimate comparison? In fact the analogy works quite well, despite the fact that a light wave has a wavelength about a million times shorter. This is because diffraction effects scale uniformly. That is, if we enlarge or reduce the whole diffraction situation by the same factor, including both the wavelengths and the sizes of the obstacles the wave encounters, the result is still a valid solution. This is unusually simple behavior! In section 1.2 we saw many examples of more complex scaling, such as the impossibility of bacteria the size of dogs, or the need for an elephant to eliminate heat through its ears because of its small surface-to-volume ratio, whereas a tiny shrew's life-style centers around conserving its body heat. Of course water waves and light waves differ in many ways, not just in scale, but the general facts you will learn about diffraction are applicable to all waves. In some ways it might have been more appropriate to insert this chapter after chapter 20 on bounded waves, but many of the important applications are to light waves, and you would probably have found these much more difficult without any background in optics. Another way of stating the simple scaling behavior of diffraction is that the diffraction angles we get depend only on the unitless ratio /d, where is the wavelength of the wave and d is some dimension of the diffracting objects, e.g., the center-to-center spacing between the slits in figure a. If, for instance, we scale up both and d by a factor of 37, the ratio /d will be unchanged.

32.3 The correspondence principle

e / Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695). The only reason we don't usually notice diffraction of light in everyday life is that we don't normally deal with objects that are comparable in size to a wavelength of visible light, which is about a millionth of a meter. Does this mean that wave optics contradicts ray optics, or that wave optics sometimes gives wrong results? No. If you hold three fingers out in the sunlight and cast a shadow with them, either wave optics or ray optics can be used to predict the straightforward result: a shadow pattern with two bright lines where the light has gone through the gaps between your fingers. Wave optics is a more general theory than ray optics, so in any case where ray optics is valid, the two theories will agree. This is an example of a general idea enunciated by the physicist Niels Bohr, called the correspondence principle: when flaws in a physical theory lead to the creation of a new and more general theory, the new theory must still agree with the old theory within its more restricted area of applicability. After all, a theory is only created as a way of describing experimental observations. If the original theory had not worked in any cases at all, it would never have become accepted. In the case of optics, the correspondence principle tells us that when /d is small, both the ray and the wave model of light must give approximately the same result. Suppose you spread your fingers and cast a shadow with them using a coherent light source. The quantity /d is about 104 , so the two models will agree very closely. (To be specific, the shadows of your fingers will be outlined by a series of light and dark fringes, but the angle subtended by a fringe will be on the order of 10-4 radians, so they will be invisible and washed out by the natural fuzziness of the edges of sun-shadows, caused by the finite size of the sun.)
self-check:

What kind of wavelength would an electromagnetic wave have to have in order to diffract dramatically around your body? Does this contradict the correspondence principle?
(answer in the back of the PDF version of the book)

32.4 Huygens' principle

f / Double-slit diffraction.

g / A wavefront can be analyzed by the principle of superposition, breaking it down into many small parts.

h / If it was by itself, each of the parts would spread out as a circular ripple.

i / Adding up the ripples produces a new wavefront.

j / Thomas Young

k / Double-slit diffraction.

l / Use of Huygens' principle.

m / Constructive interference along the center-line. Returning to the example of double-slit diffraction, f, note the strong visual impression of two overlapping sets of concentric semicircles. This is an example of Huygens' principle, named after a Dutch physicist and astronomer. (The first syllable rhymes with boy.) Huygens' principle states that any wavefront can be broken down into many small side-by-side wave peaks, g, which then spread out as circular ripples, h, and by the principle of superposition, the result of adding up these sets of ripples must give the same result as allowing the wave to propagate forward, i. In the case of sound or light waves, which propagate in three dimensions, the ripples are actually spherical rather than circular, but we can often imagine things in two dimensions for simplicity. In double-slit diffraction the application of Huygens' principle is visually convincing: it is as though all the sets of ripples have been blocked except for two. It is a rather surprising mathematical fact, however, that Huygens' principle gives the right result in the case of an unobstructed linear wave, h and i. A theoretically infinite number of circular wave patterns somehow conspire to add together and produce the simple linear wave motion with which we are familiar. Since Huygens' principle is equivalent to the principle of superposition, and superposition is a property of waves, what Huygens had created was essentially the first wave theory of light. However, he imagined light as a series of pulses, like hand claps, rather than as a sinusoidal wave. The history is interesting. Isaac Newton loved the atomic theory of matter so much that he searched enthusiastically for evidence that light was also made of tiny particles. The paths of his light particles would correspond to rays in our description; the only significant difference between a ray model and a particle model of light would occur if one could isolate individual particles and show that light had a graininess to it. Newton never did this, so although he thought of his model as a particle model, it is more accurate to say he was one of the builders of the ray model. Almost all that was known about reflection and refraction of light could be interpreted equally well in terms of a particle model or a wave model, but Newton had one reason for strongly opposing Huygens' wave theory. Newton knew that waves exhibited diffraction, but diffraction of light is difficult to observe, so Newton believed that light did not exhibit diffraction, and therefore must not be a wave. Although Newton's criticisms were fair enough, the debate also took on the overtones of a nationalistic dispute between England and continental Europe, fueled by English resentment over Leibniz's supposed plagiarism of Newton's calculus. Newton wrote a book on optics, and his prestige and political prominence tended to discourage questioning of his model. Thomas Young (1773-1829) was the person who finally, a hundred years later, did a careful search for wave interference effects with light and analyzed the results correctly. He observed double-slit diffraction of light as well as a variety of other diffraction effects, all of which showed that light exhibited wave interference effects, and that the wavelengths of visible light waves were extremely short. The crowning achievement was the demonstration by the

experimentalist Heinrich Hertz and the theorist James Clerk Maxwell that light was an electromagnetic wave. Maxwell is said to have related his discovery to his wife one starry evening and told her that she was the only other person in the world who knew what starlight was.

32.5 Double-slit diffraction

n / The waves travel distances L and L' from the two slits to get to the same point in space, at an angle from the center line.

o / A close-up view of figure n, showing how the path length difference L-L' is related to d and to the angle .

p / Cutting d in half doubles the angles of the diffraction fringes.

q / Double-slit diffraction patterns of long-wavelength red light (top) and short-wavelength blue light (bottom).

r / Interpretation of the angular spacing in example 3. It can be defined either from maximum to maximum or from minimum to minimum. Either way, the result is the same. It does not make sense to try to interpret as the width of a fringe; one can see from the graph and from the image below that it is not obvious either that such a thing is well defined or that it would be the same for all fringes. Let's now analyze double-slit diffraction, k, using Huygens' principle. The most interesting question is how to compute the angles such as X and Z where the wave intensity is at a maximum, and the in-between angles like Y where it is minimized. Let's measure all our angles with respect to the vertical center line of the figure, which was the original direction of propagation of the wave. If we assume that the width of the slits is small (on the order of the wavelength of the wave or less), then we can imagine only a single set of Huygens ripples spreading out from each one, l. White lines represent peaks, black ones troughs. The only dimension of the diffracting slits that has any effect on the geometric pattern of the overlapping ripples is then the center-to-center distance, d, between the slits. We know from our discussion of the scaling of diffraction that there must be some equation that relates an angle like Z to the ratio /d,
dZ.

If the equation for Z depended on some other expression such as +d or 2/d, then it would change when we scaled and d by the same factor, which would violate what we know about the scaling of diffraction. Along the central maximum line, X, we always have positive waves coinciding with positive ones and negative waves coinciding with negative ones. (I have arbitrarily chosen to take a snapshot of the pattern at a moment when the waves emerging from the slit are experiencing a positive peak.) The superposition of the two sets of ripples therefore results in a doubling of the

wave amplitude along this line. There is constructive interference. This is easy to explain, because by symmetry, each wave has had to travel an equal number of wavelengths to get from its slit to the center line, m: Because both sets of ripples have ten wavelengths to cover in order to reach the point along direction X, they will be in step when they get there. At the point along direction Y shown in the same figure, one wave has traveled ten wavelengths, and is therefore at a positive extreme, but the other has traveled only nine and a half wavelengths, so it at a negative extreme. There is perfect cancellation, so points along this line experience no wave motion. But the distance traveled does not have to be equal in order to get constructive interference. At the point along direction Z, one wave has gone nine wavelengths and the other ten. They are both at a positive extreme.
self-check:

At a point half a wavelength below the point marked along direction X, carry out a similar analysis.
(answer in the back of the PDF version of the book)

To summarize, we will have perfect constructive interference at any point where the distance to one slit differs from the distance to the other slit by an integer number of wavelengths. Perfect destructive interference will occur when the number of wavelengths of path length difference equals an integer plus a half. Now we are ready to find the equation that predicts the angles of the maxima and minima. The waves travel different distances to get to the same point in space, n. We need to find whether the waves are in phase (in step) or out of phase at this point in order to predict whether there will be constructive interference, destructive interference, or something in between. One of our basic assumptions in this chapter is that we will only be dealing with the diffracted wave in regions very far away from the object that diffracts it, so the triangle is long and skinny. Most real-world examples with diffraction of light, in fact, would have triangles with even skinner proportions than this one. The two long sides are therefore very nearly parallel, and we are justified in drawing the right triangle shown in figure o, labeling one leg of the right triangle as the difference in path length , L-L', and labeling the acute angle as . (In reality this angle is a tiny bit greater than the one labeled in figure n.) The difference in path length is related to d and by the equation
L-Ld=sin.

Constructive interference will result in a maximum at angles for which L-L' is an integer number of wavelengths,

L-L=m.[condition for a maximum; m is an integer]

Here m equals 0 for the central maximum, -1 for the first maximum to its left, +2 for the second maximum on the right, etc. Putting all the ingredients together, we find m/d=sin , or
d=sinm.[condition for a maximum; m is an integer]

Similarly, the condition for a minimum is

d=sinm.[condition for a minimum; m is an integer plus 1 / 2]

That is, the minima are about halfway between the maxima. As expected based on scaling, this equation relates angles to the unitless ratio /d. Alternatively, we could say that we have proven the scaling property in the special case of double-slit diffraction. It was inevitable that the result would have these scaling properties, since the whole proof was geometric, and would have been equally valid when enlarged or reduced on a photocopying machine! Counterintuitively, this means that a diffracting object with smaller dimensions produces a bigger diffraction pattern, p.
Example 1: Double-slit diffraction of blue and red light

Blue light has a shorter wavelength than red. For a given double-slit spacing d, the smaller value of /d for leads to smaller values of sin , and therefore to a more closely spaced set of diffraction fringes, (g)
Example 2: The correspondence principle

Let's also consider how the equations for double-slit diffraction relate to the correspondence principle. When the ratio /d is very small, we should recover the case of simple ray optics. Now if /d is small, sin must be small as well, and the spacing between the diffraction fringes will be small as well. Although we have not proven it, the central fringe is always the brightest, and the fringes get dimmer and dimmer as we go farther from it. For small values of /d, the part of the diffraction pattern that is bright enough to be detectable covers only a small range of angles. This is exactly what we would expect from ray optics: the rays passing through the two slits would remain parallel, and would continue moving in the =0 direction. (In fact there would be images of the two separate slits on the screen, but our analysis was all in terms of angles, so we should not expect it to address the issue of whether there is structure within a set of rays that are all traveling in the =0 direction.)
Example 3: Spacing of the fringes at small angles At small angles, we can use the approximation sin, which is valid if is measured in radians. The equation for double-slit diffraction becomes simply

d=m, which can be solved for to give =md. The difference in angle between successive fringes is the change in that results from changing m by plus or minus one, =d. For example, if we write 7 for the angle of the seventh bright fringe on one side of the central maximum and 8 for the neighboring one, we have 8-7 =8d-7d =d, and similarly for any other neighboring pair of fringes.

Although the equation /d=sin /m is only valid for a double slit, it is can still be a guide to our thinking even if we are observing diffraction of light by a virus or a flea's leg: it is always true that (1) large values of /d lead to a broad diffraction pattern, and (2) diffraction patterns are repetitive. In many cases the equation looks just like /d =sin /m but with an extra numerical factor thrown in, and with d interpreted as some other dimension of the object, e.g., the diameter of a piece of wire.

Linear

Circular

Elliptical

In the leftmost figure above, the two orthogonal (perpendicular) components are in phase. In this case the ratio of the strengths of the two components is constant, so the direction of the electric vector (the vector sum of these two components) is constant. Since the tip of the vector traces out a single line in the plane, this special case is called linear polarization. The direction of this line depends on the relative amplitudes of the two components. In the middle figure, the two orthogonal components have exactly the same amplitude and are exactly ninety degrees out of phase. In this case one component is zero when the other component is at maximum or minimum amplitude. There are two possible phase relationships that satisfy this requirement: the x component can be ninety degrees ahead of the y component or it can be ninety degrees behind the y component. In this special case the electric vector traces out a circle in the plane, so this special case is called circular polarization. The direction the field rotates in depends on which of the two phase relationships exists. These cases are called righthand circular polarization and left-hand circular polarization, depending on which way the electric vector rotates and the chosen convention.

Another case is when the two components are not in phase and either do not have the same amplitude or are not ninety degrees out of phase, though their phase offset and their amplitude ratio are constant.[2] This kind of polarization is called elliptical polarization because the electric vector traces out an ellipse in the plane (the polarization ellipse). This is shown in the above figure on the right.

Animation of a circularly polarized wave as a sum of two components The "Cartesian" decomposition of the electric field into x and y components is, of course, arbitrary. Plane waves of any polarization can be described instead by combining any two orthogonally polarized waves, for instance waves of opposite circular polarization. The Cartesian polarization decomposition is natural when dealing with reflection from surfaces, birefringent materials, or synchrotron radiation. The circularly polarized modes are a more useful basis for the study of light propagation in stereoisomers. Though this section discusses polarization for idealized plane waves, all the above is a very accurate description for most practical optical experiments which use TEM modes, including Gaussian optics.

Unpolarized light
Most sources of electromagnetic radiation contain a large number of atoms or molecules that emit light. The orientation of the electric fields produced by these emitters may not be correlated, in which case the light is said to be unpolarized. If there is partial correlation between the emitters, the light is partially polarized. If the polarization is consistent across the spectrum of the source, partially polarized light can be described as a superposition of a completely unpolarized component, and a completely polarized one. One may then describe the light in terms of the degree of polarization, and the parameters of the polarization ellipse.