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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.
Subscripts 1 and 2 refer to initial and final optical media respectively. These ratios are sometimes also used, following simply from other definitions of refractive index, wave phase velocity, and the luminal speed equation:
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.
An illustration of the polarization of light that is incident on an interface at Brewster's angle. Brewster's angle (also known as the polarization angle) is an angle of incidence at which light with a particular polarization is perfectly transmitted through a transparent dielectric surface, with no reflection.
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.
There are two types of the acousto-optic filters, the collinear and non-collinear filters. The type of filter depends on geometry of acousto-optic interaction. The polarization of the incident light can be either ordinary or extraordinary. For the definition, we assume ordinary polarization. Here the following list of symbols is used, [10]
The different angles of refraction for the two polarization components are shown in the figure at the top of this page, with the optic axis along the surface (and perpendicular to the plane of incidence), so that the angle of refraction is different for the p polarization (the "ordinary ray" in this case, having its electric vector ...