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Figure 1. The light path through a Michelson interferometer.The two light rays with a common source combine at the half-silvered mirror to reach the detector. They may either interfere constructively (strengthening in intensity) if their light waves arrive in phase, or interfere destructively (weakening in intensity) if they arrive out of phase, depending on the exact distances between the ...
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.
As shown in Fig. 3a and 3b, the observer has a direct view of mirror M 1 seen through the beam splitter, and sees a reflected image M' 2 of mirror M 2. The fringes can be interpreted as the result of interference between light coming from the two virtual images S' 1 and S' 2 of the original source S. The characteristics of the interference ...
Another common-path interferometer useful in lens testing and fluid flow diagnostics is the point diffraction interferometer (PDI), invented by Linnik in 1933. [11] [12] The reference beam is generated by diffraction from a small pinhole, about half the diameter of the Airy disk, in a semitransparent plate. Fig. 1 illustrates an aberrated ...
Circular polarization can be created by sending linearly polarized light through a quarter-wave plate oriented at 45° to the linear polarization to create two components of the same amplitude with the required phase shift. The superposition of the original and phase-shifted components causes a rotating electric field vector, which is depicted ...
Interference between a point source and a plane wave, both incident normally on the plate. When a plane wave is added to a point source and the resulting interference pattern recorded, a point source hologram is produced. This is effectively a Fresnel zone plate which acts as a lens. If the plane wave is normally incident on the recording plate ...
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.
This polarization is measured at the second detector, thus "marking" the photons and destroying the interference pattern (see Fresnel–Arago laws). Finally, a linear polarizer is introduced in the path of the first photon of the entangled pair, giving this photon a diagonal polarization (see Figure 2). Entanglement ensures a complementary ...