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Huygens' theory served as a fundamental explanation of the wave nature of light interference and was further developed by Fresnel and Young but did not fully resolve all observations such as the low-intensity double-slit experiment first performed by G. I. Taylor in 1909.
Treatise on Light: In Which Are Explained the Causes of That Which Occurs in Reflection & Refraction (French: Traité de la Lumière: Où sont expliquées les causes de ce qui luy arrive dans la reflexion & dans la refraction) is a book written by Dutch polymath Christiaan Huygens that was published in French in 1690.
The thus-named Huygens–Fresnel principle was the basis for the advancement of physical optics, explaining all aspects of light propagation until Maxwell's electromagnetic theory culminated in the development of quantum mechanics and the discovery of the photon.
Huygens principle of double refraction, named after Dutch physicist Christiaan Huygens, explains the phenomenon of double refraction observed in uniaxial anisotropic material such as calcite. When unpolarized light propagates in such materials (along a direction different from the optical axis ), it splits into two different rays, known as ...
This theory came to dominate the conceptions of light in the eighteenth century, displacing the previously prominent vibration theories, where light was viewed as "pressure" of the medium between the source and the receiver, first championed by René Descartes, and later in a more refined form by Christiaan Huygens. [1]
[3] [4] [5] Thomas Young's experiment with light was part of classical physics long before the development of quantum mechanics and the concept of wave–particle duality. He believed it demonstrated that the Christiaan Huygens' wave theory of light was correct, and his experiment is sometimes referred to as Young's experiment [6] or Young's ...
Augustin-Jean Fresnel submitted a thesis based on wave theory and whose substance consisted of a synthesis of the Huygens' principle and Young's principle of interference. [2] Poisson studied Fresnel's theory in detail and of course looked for a way to prove it wrong being a supporter of the particle theory of light.
These authors credit Huygens with the first calculation of the speed of light. [18] Huygens's estimate was a value of 110,000,000 toises per second: as the toise was later determined to be just under two metres, [note 10] this gives the value in SI units.