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Thomas Young's sketch of two-slit diffraction for water ripple tank from his 1807 Lectures [6]: 139 . 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. [7]
Because diffraction is the result of addition of all waves (of given wavelength) along all unobstructed paths, the usual procedure is to consider the contribution of an infinitesimally small neighborhood around a certain path (this contribution is usually called a wavelet) and then integrate over all paths (= add all wavelets) from the source to the detector (or given point on a screen).
A geometrical arrangement used in deriving the Kirchhoff's diffraction formula. The area designated by A 1 is the aperture (opening), the areas marked by A 2 are opaque areas, and A 3 is the hemisphere as a part of the closed integral surface (consisted of the areas A 1, A 2, and A 3) for the Kirchhoff's integral theorem.
This is illustrated in the figure above, where the first pattern is the diffraction pattern of a single slit, given by the sinc function in this equation, and the second figure shows the combined intensity of the light diffracted from the two slits, where the cos function represents the fine structure, and the coarser structure represents ...
Some of the earliest work on what would become known as Fresnel diffraction was carried out by Francesco Maria Grimaldi in Italy in the 17th century. In his monograph entitled "Light", [3] Richard C. MacLaurin explains Fresnel diffraction by asking what happens when light propagates, and how that process is affected when a barrier with a slit or hole in it is interposed in the beam produced by ...
These can be summarized in the fact that the wavelength of light is much smaller than the dimensions of any optical components encountered. [3] Kirchhoff's diffraction formula provides a rigorous mathematical foundation for diffraction, based on the wave equation. The arbitrary assumptions made by Fresnel to arrive at the Huygens–Fresnel ...
The refractive index of water at 20 °C for visible light is 1.33. [1] The refractive index of normal ice is 1.31 (from List of refractive indices).In general, an index of refraction is a complex number with real and imaginary parts, where the latter indicates the strength of absorption loss at a particular wavelength.
The Fraunhofer diffraction equation is a simplified version of Kirchhoff's diffraction formula and it can be used to model light diffraction when both a light source and a viewing plane (a plane of observation where the diffracted wave is observed) are effectively infinitely distant from a diffracting aperture. [6]