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Physical optics is used to explain effects such as diffraction. In physics, physical optics, or wave optics, is the branch of optics that studies interference, diffraction, polarization, and other phenomena for which the ray approximation of geometric optics is not valid.
Figure 1. The light path through a Michelson interferometer.The two light rays with a common source combine at the half-silvered mirror to reach the detector. They may either interfere constructively (strengthening in intensity) if their light waves arrive in phase, or interfere destructively (weakening in intensity) if they arrive out of phase, depending on the exact distances between the ...
This polarization is measured at the second detector, thus "marking" the photons and destroying the interference pattern (see Fresnel–Arago laws). Finally, a linear polarizer is introduced in the path of the first photon of the entangled pair, giving this photon a diagonal polarization (see Figure 2).
Another common-path interferometer useful in lens testing and fluid flow diagnostics is the point diffraction interferometer (PDI), invented by Linnik in 1933. [11] [12] The reference beam is generated by diffraction from a small pinhole, about half the diameter of the Airy disk, in a semitransparent plate. Fig. 1 illustrates an aberrated ...
To understand the process, it is helpful to understand interference and diffraction. Interference occurs when one or more wavefronts are superimposed. Diffraction occurs when a wavefront encounters an object. The process of producing a holographic reconstruction is explained below purely in terms of interference and diffraction.
Diffraction is the same physical effect as interference, but interference is typically applied to superposition of a few waves and the term diffraction is used when many waves are superposed. [1]: 433 Italian scientist Francesco Maria Grimaldi coined the word diffraction and was the first to record accurate observations of the phenomenon in 1660.
The phenomenon of polarization arises as a consequence of the fact that light behaves as a two-dimensional transverse wave. Circular polarization occurs when the two orthogonal electric field component vectors are of equal magnitude and are out of phase by exactly 90°, or one-quarter wavelength.
The Jones matrix for an arbitrary birefringent material is the most general form of a polarization transformation in the Jones calculus; it can represent any polarization transformation. To see this, one can show