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Light is deflected as it enters a material with refractive index > 1. A ray of light is deflected twice in a prism. The sum of these deflections is the deviation angle. When the entrance and exit angles are equal, the deviation angle of a ray passing through a prism will be minimal.
Fig. 1: Fermat's principle in the case of refraction of light at a flat surface between (say) air and water. Given an object-point A in the air, and an observation point B in the water, the refraction point P is that which minimizes the time taken by the light to travel the path APB.
Snell's law (also known as the Snell–Descartes law, the ibn-Sahl law, [1] and the law of refraction) is a formula used to describe the relationship between the angles of incidence and refraction, when referring to light or other waves passing through a boundary between two different isotropic media, such as water, glass, or
A ray trace through a prism with apex angle α. Regions 0, 1, and 2 have indices of refraction, , and , and primed angles ′ indicate the ray's angle after refraction.. Ray angle deviation and dispersion through a prism can be determined by tracing a sample ray through the element and using Snell's law at each interface.
Light from the exit slit is passed either through diffusers or an integrating sphere on to the imaging device while a calibrated detector simultaneously measures the light. Coordination of the imager, calibrated detector, and monochromator allows one to calculate the carriers (electrons or holes) generated for a photon of a given wavelength, QE.
Light of composite wavelengths (natural sunlight) disperses into a visible spectrum passing through a prism, because of the wavelength-dependent refractive index of the prism material ; that is, each component wave within the composite light is bent a different amount.
The OPD corresponds to the phase shift undergone by the light emitted from two previously coherent sources when passed through mediums of different refractive indices. For example, a wave passing through air appears to travel a shorter distance than an identical wave traveling the same distance in glass.
The most common of these, geometric optics, treats light as a collection of rays that travel in straight lines and bend when they pass through or reflect from surfaces. Physical optics is a more comprehensive model of light, which includes wave effects such as diffraction and interference that cannot be accounted for in geometric optics.