December 2022
Intermediate to advanced
448 pages
18h 28m
English
Physical optics is the study of the behaviour of light as it propagates through space. In doing so, it may encounter an aperture or obstacle or a change in refractive index. As a result, the shape of the light wavefront may change and the direction of propagation of the light and its phase are both altered. This effect, known as diffraction, is an important aspect of physical optics. Another important behaviour of light is interference, which is what happens when light waves encounter one another having travelled through different optical paths. A third and extremely important property of light is its coherence, and a fourth is its state of polarization. All these aspects of light ...
Read now
Unlock full access