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A basic distinction is between isotropic materials, which exhibit the same properties regardless of the direction of the light, and anisotropic ones, which exhibit different properties when light passes through them in different directions. The optical properties of matter can lead to a variety of interesting optical phenomena.
An example of light exhibiting sub-Poissonian statistics is squeezed light. Recently researchers have shown that sub-Poissonian light can be induced in a quantum dot exhibiting resonance fluorescence. [5] A technique used to measure the sub-Poissonian structure of light is a homodyne intensity correlation scheme. [6]
Many materials have a well-characterized refractive index, but these indices often depend strongly upon the frequency of light, causing optical dispersion. Standard refractive index measurements are taken at the "yellow doublet" sodium D line, with a wavelength (λ) of 589 nanometers.
Light scattering in liquids and solids depends on the wavelength of the light being scattered. Limits to spatial scales of visibility (using white light) therefore arise, depending on the frequency of the light wave and the physical dimension (or spatial scale) of the scattering center. Visible light has a wavelength scale on the order of 0.5 μm.
Interference pattern of double slits, where the slit width is one third the wavelength. Extraordinary optical transmission (EOT) is the phenomenon of greatly enhanced transmission of light through a subwavelength aperture in an otherwise opaque metallic film which has been patterned with a regularly repeating periodic structure.
This may be related to other properties of the object through the Beer–Lambert law. Precise measurements of the absorbance at many wavelengths allow the identification of a substance via absorption spectroscopy, where a sample is illuminated from one side, and the intensity of the light that exits from the sample in every direction is measured.
Absorption of light in water. The refractive index of water at 20 °C for visible light is 1.33. [1] The refractive index of normal ice is 1.31 (from List of refractive indices). In general, an index of refraction is a complex number with real and imaginary parts, where the latter indicates the strength of absorption loss at a particular ...
Since that refractive index varies with wavelength, it follows that the angle that the light is refracted by will also vary with wavelength, causing an angular separation of the colors known as angular dispersion. For visible light, refraction indices n of most transparent materials (e.g., air, glasses) decrease with increasing wavelength λ: