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Sound waves can diffract around objects, which is why one can still hear someone calling even when hiding behind a tree. [26] Diffraction can also be a concern in some technical applications; it sets a fundamental limit to the resolution of a camera, telescope, or microscope. Other examples of diffraction are considered below.
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).
The observation of sub-wavelength structures with microscopes is difficult because of the Abbe diffraction limit.Ernst Abbe found in 1873, [2] and expressed as a formula in 1882, [3] that light with wavelength , traveling in a medium with refractive index and converging to a spot with half-angle will have a minimum resolvable distance of
Close to an aperture or atoms, often called the "sample", the electron wave would be described in terms of near field or Fresnel diffraction. [12]: Chpt 7-8 This has relevance for imaging within electron microscopes, [1]: Chpt 3 [2]: Chpt 3-4 whereas electron diffraction patterns are measured far from the sample, which is described as far-field or Fraunhofer diffraction. [12]:
Correspondingly, for this particular imaging device, the spokes become more and more blurred towards the center until they merge into a gray, unresolved, disc. Note that sometimes the optical transfer function is given in units of the object or sample space, observation angle, film width, or normalized to the theoretical maximum.
If the instrument is designed to measure the spectrum on an absolute scale rather than a relative one, then it is typically called a spectrophotometer. The majority of spectrophotometers are used in spectral regions near the visible spectrum. A spectrometer that is calibrated for measurement of the incident optical power is called a ...
The Rayleigh criterion for barely resolving two objects that are point sources of light, such as stars seen through a telescope, is that the center of the Airy disk for the first object occurs at the first minimum of the Airy disk of the second. This means that the angular resolution of a diffraction-limited system is given by the same formulae.
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 ...