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Optics is the branch of physics that studies the behaviour and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it. [1] Optics usually describes the behaviour of visible, ultraviolet, and infrared light.
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:
Geometrical optics, or ray optics, is a model of optics that describes light propagation in terms of rays. The ray in geometrical optics is an abstraction useful for approximating the paths along which light propagates under certain circumstances.
Later, the connection between atomic physics and optical physics became apparent, by the discovery of spectral lines and attempts to describe the phenomenon - notably by Joseph von Fraunhofer, Fresnel, and others in the 19th century. [14] From that time to the 1920s, physicists were seeking to explain atomic spectra and blackbody radiation.
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. This usage tends not to include effects such as quantum noise in optical communication, which is studied in the sub-branch of coherence ...
Physics – branch of science that studies matter [9] and its motion through space and time, along with related concepts such as energy and force. [10] Physics is one of the "fundamental sciences" because the other natural sciences (like biology, geology etc.) deal with systems that seem to obey the laws of physics. According to physics, the ...
Principles of Optics, colloquially known as Born and Wolf, is an optics textbook written by Max Born and Emil Wolf that was initially published in 1959 by Pergamon Press. [1] After going through six editions with Pergamon Press, the book was transferred to Cambridge University Press who issued an expanded seventh edition in 1999. [ 2 ]
Optics is a broad subject area. Much of the content is covered in subcategories. Many basic concepts are covered in Category:Geometrical optics, in which light is considered as if it were composed of rays. Articles dealing with the wave nature of light can be found in Category:Physical optics.