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In a medium, light usually does not propagate at a speed equal to c; further, different types of light wave will travel at different speeds. The speed at which the individual crests and troughs of a plane wave (a wave filling the whole space, with only one frequency ) propagate is called the phase velocity v p .
They set a limit on the anisotropy of the speed of light resulting from the Earth's motions of Δc/c ≈ 10 −15, where Δc is the difference between the speed of light in the x- and y-directions. [33] As of 2015, optical and microwave resonator experiments have improved this limit to Δc/c ≈ 10 −18.
Dispersion occurs when sinusoidal waves of different wavelengths have different propagation velocities, so that a wave packet of mixed wavelengths tends to spread out in space. The speed of a plane wave, v {\displaystyle v} , is a function of the wave's wavelength λ {\displaystyle \lambda } :
The speed at which energy or signals travel down a cable is actually the speed of the electromagnetic wave traveling along (guided by) the cable. I.e., a cable is a form of a waveguide. The propagation of the wave is affected by the interaction with the material(s) in and surrounding the cable, caused by the presence of electric charge carriers ...
In the context of electromagnetics and optics, the frequency is some function ω(k) of the wave number, so in general, the phase velocity and the group velocity depend on specific medium and frequency. The ratio between the speed of light c and the phase velocity v p is known as the refractive index, n = c / v p = ck / ω.
Refraction of light at the interface between two media of different refractive indices, with n 2 > n 1.Since the velocity is lower in the second medium (v 2 < v 1), the angle of refraction θ 2 is less than the angle of incidence θ 1; that is, the ray in the higher-index medium is closer to the normal.
The wave velocity in one medium not only may differ from that in another, but the velocity typically varies with wavelength. As a result, the change in direction upon entering a different medium changes with the wavelength of the wave. For electromagnetic waves the speed in a medium is governed by its refractive index according to
Since the power of a wave in a particular medium is proportional to the square of a field quantity, one may speak of a penetration depth at which the magnitude of the electric (or magnetic) field has decayed to 1/e of its surface value, and at which point the power of the wave has thereby decreased to / or about 13% of its surface value: