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Diffraction from a large three-dimensional periodic structure such as many thousands of atoms in a crystal is called Bragg diffraction. It is similar to what occurs when waves are scattered from a diffraction grating. Bragg diffraction is a consequence of interference between waves reflecting from many different crystal planes.
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 ...
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).
In optics, the Fraunhofer diffraction equation is used to model the diffraction of waves when plane waves are incident on a diffracting object, and the diffraction pattern is viewed at a sufficiently long distance (a distance satisfying Fraunhofer condition) from the object (in the far-field region), and also when it is viewed at the focal plane of an imaging lens.
Another criterion called Gaussian pilot beam allowing to define far and near field conditions, consists to measure the actual wavefront surface curvature for an unaberrated system. In this case the wavefront is planar at the aperture position, when the beam is collimated , or at its focus when the beam is converging/ diverging . [ 2 ]
In a camera or imaging system an object far away gets imaged onto the film or detector plane by the objective lens, and the far field diffraction pattern is observed at the detector. The resulting image is a convolution of the ideal image with the Airy diffraction pattern due to diffraction from the iris aperture or due to the finite size of ...
The near field and far field are regions of the electromagnetic (EM) field around an object, such as a transmitting antenna, or the result of radiation scattering off an object. Non-radiative near-field behaviors dominate close to the antenna or scatterer, while electromagnetic radiation far-field behaviors predominate at greater distances.
For small objects, different methods are used that also depend upon determining size in units of wavelengths. For instance, in the case of a crystal, atomic spacings can be determined using X-ray diffraction. [13]