Questions tagged [optics]
Optics is the study of light, and its interaction with matter. It includes topics such as imaging systems, fiber optics, lasers, quantum optics, and more.
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Confusion regarding phase
As far as I know about phase if the phase difference between two waves is positive, the former is leading..and the latter is lagging. Then why has D J Grifith stated this?
If the phase of the magnetic ...
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Huygens' principle and the laws of reflection/refraction
As I understand the Huygens principle, all points on the wavefront are sources of secondary spherical wavelets and the tangent to these wavelets will form new wavefront. This is used to prove the ...
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Is there a good quantum explanation of refraction? [duplicate]
I'm aware of the classical explanation of refraction which deals with light being a wave that gets "slowed" down while passing from a medium to another. One problem that I have with this ...
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At which wavelengths do photons behave like X-ray?
Hard X-rays of wavelengths of about an angstrom are very different than regular lights in a way that they can’t be reflected or refracted, which means their refractive index is always close to 1 ...
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Directionality of laser light in vacuum [duplicate]
It is well-known that laser light is directional because of coherence from stimulated emission. This means that the light is emitted ONLY in the direction of propagation, and not in any type of ...
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Eye Floaters Optics
Eye floaters are these annoying objects floating in someones eye, usually seen by someone experiencing them as squiggly lines and dots buzzing around, either dark or partially transparent (I ...
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Michelson interferometer but with 1 arm (Part 2)
I designed a setup similar to Michelson Interferometer but with one mirror only. So, there is an angle between the 2 rays to the detector:
In order to understand the result on screen, I used (Zemax/...
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Absorption and emission spectrum terminology
Hi everyone recently i was looking for laser crystals and since I am an autodidact i was confused by the terminology and units of the optics domain. And specialy by the absorption and emission ...
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Can a collimated laser have curved wavefronts?
I know that a plane wave's collimation is affected by the curvature of its wavefronts. But since laser beam is composed of many plane waves, does it still apply ? Although there is always some ...
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How is light interference explained with photons?
In the classical model of light as an EM wave, interference is a trivial consequence of the linearity of the wave equation. Now, if we model light as collections of photons, how is light interference ...
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Can an optical medium be lossless and dispersive?
Occasionally, I come across the phrase "lossless dispersive linear optical medium". How can such a medium be possible mathematically? I mean the real and imaginary parts of the electric ...
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Modified two slit diffraction experiment
I thought up a slight modification to the classic two-slit experiment that would be fun to try, but I am certain that I am not the only person to consider it, and would like to know if it has already ...
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Why is vertically polarized light preferentially refracted at the surface and horizontally polarized light preferentially reflected?
I was reading OpenStax Physics on the topic of polarisation and Brewster's angle but there was no clear explanation as to why vertically polarised light generally refracts while horizontally polarised ...
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Would the use of LIPC's for Lasers avoid eye damage for bystanders?
Laser Induced Plasma Channels (LIPC) can create a tunnel of plasma in the air for a brief moment (milliseconds). But the formation of a LIPC is a process and not something instantaneous when it comes ...
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What does the optical Hamiltonian mean?
So I was trying to demonstrate Snell's law with Hamilton's equations, and when I got the Hamiltonian:
$$H = -\sqrt{n^2-p_{1}^2-p_{2}^2}.$$
I had a question about what this Hamiltonian indicates. I ...
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