Lecture 6

OPTICS - BRANCH OF PHYSICS THAT STUDIES

THE BEHAVIOR AND PROPERTIES OF LIGHT,
INCLUDING ITS INTERACTIONS WITH MATTER
Technological Revolution in Optics

Communication
by photons METRO
WAN
TRANS-
OCEANIC WAN
METRO

V
Telephony/data/internet

Massive optical
data storage
CD/DVD Blu-ray disc (25GB)

Precision laser
machining
Laser writing on
human hair Photolithography for manufacture
Laser cutting of computer chips

Medical laser therapy

& optical imaging

Corrective laser eye surgery 3-D laser imaging of cell

Optics has an important place in history

Today, Optics remains

a key scientific
diagnostic technique
Telescope observations forged our (e.g. imaging).
Optics, light & understanding of the Universe
vision has been vital A new revolution in
for human survival Microscopes revealed a micro- Optics has emerged
universe with the birth of the
laser, fibre optics,
integration of optics
and electronics, etc..
 ATMOSPHERIC OPTICS
There are many natural occurrences of light optics in our atmosphere.
One of the most common of these is
the rainbow, which is caused by
water droplets dispersing sunlight.
Others include arcs, halos, cloud
iridescence, and many more.
Photo gallery of atmospheric optics.
What is light ?

Rays ? Waves ?
Historical debate on nature of light

or
Particles Waves
LIGHT AS A PARTICLE

Isaac Newton (1642-1727) stated that

light was composed of tiny particles
emitted in all directions by hot objects
The geometric nature of reflection and
refraction of light could only be
explained if light was made of particles
These corpuscles are perfectly elastic,
rigid, and weightless
LIGHT AS A WAVE

Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695)

thought light was a kind of wave
vibrating up and down as it moved
forward
The light waves travel in a medium called
the Luminiferous ether
Newton's corpuscular theory states that
light would travel faster in a denser
medium, while the wave theory of
Huygens says the opposite
LIGHT AS A WAVE

Thomas Young (1773-1829) proved that

light is a wave, because light suffers the
phenomenon of interference that is
typical for waves
LIGHT AS AN ELECTROMAGNETIC WAVE

Michael Faraday (1791-1867)

discovered that a magnetic field
influenced polarized light – a
phenomenon known as the Faraday
effect.
LIGHT AS AN ELECTROMAGNETIC WAVE

James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879)

demonstrated that electric and magnetic
fields travel through space as waves
moving at the speed of light.
QUANTUM OPTICS

Quantum optics studies the nature and

effects of light as quantized photons.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)
postulated that light is composed of tiny
particles called photons
The photoelectric effect is the emission
of electrons when light falls on a
material.
 THE FIELDS OF OPTICS

Geometrical optics: light

travel in straight lines
Quantum Optics
Physical optics: light
propagate as a wave.
Physical Optics
(Wave optics)
Quantum optics: application
Geometrical of quantum mechanics to
Optics optical systems
Fundamentals of Optics
REFLECTION REFRACTION IMAGING
Mirror Refractive index boundary

i 1
r n1 n2 2

Snell’s Law
r=i n1sin1=n2sin2

DIFFRACTION INTERFERENCE POLARISATION

Aperture
L in e a r p o la r is e d E llip t ic a lly p o la r is e d

a b


 cos(  )  E 0 
cos(  t ) 
E  E 0   cos(  t ) E 
 sin(  )   
2  cos(  t   / 4 ) 
beam spread double-slits screen
Continuum of waves Finite no. of waves EM-theory
 PROPERTIES OF LIGHT

• Rectilinear propagation: Light travels

in straight lines.
• Reflection: Light striking a smooth
surface turns back into the original
medium.
• Refraction: Light bends when entering
a transparent medium.
 REFLECTION
• Reflection from a mirror:

Normal
Reflected
Incident ray ray
Angle of incidence Angle of
reflection

Mirror
 • The Law of Reflection

Angle of incidence = Angle of reflection

In other words, light gets reflected from a surface at ____ _____

angle it hits it.

The
same !!!
CLEAR VS. DIFFUSE REFLECTION
• Smooth, shiny surfaces have a
clear reflection:

Rough, dull surfaces have a

diffuse reflection.

Diffuse reflection is when light

is scattered in different
directions
 HALL MIRROR
• Useful to think in terms of images

“real” you

“image” you
mirror only
needs to be half as
high as you are tall. Your
image will be twice as far from you
Winter 2012 as the mirror. 20
 REFRACTION
• Light also goes through some things
glass, water, eyeball, air
• The presence of material slows light’s progress
interactions with electrical properties of atoms
• The “light slowing factor” is called the index of refraction
glass has n = 1.52, meaning that light travels about 1.5
times slower in glass than in vacuum
water has n = 1.33

21
 THE INDEX OF REFRACTION

•The speed of light in any material is less than

its speed in vacuum.
•The index of refraction, n, of a medium can be
defined as
speed of light in a vacuum c
n 
speed of light in a medium v
Credits:Thomson Brooks/Cole © 2004
 REFRACTION AT A PLANE SURFACE
• Light bends at interface between refractive indices
• bends more the larger the difference in refractive index
• can be effectively viewed as a “least time” behavior
• get from A to B faster if you spend less time in the slow medium
A

Snell’s Law:
1 n1sin1 = n2sin2
n1 = 1.0
n2 = 1.5

2

B
Winter 2012 23
 REFRACTION OF LIGHT

Light refracts whenever it travels at an angle into a

medium with a different refractive index

Credits:Thomson Brooks/Cole © 2004

Credits:Thomson Brooks/Cole © 2004

SOME INDICES OF REFRACTION

Credits:Thomson Brooks/Cole © 2004

 TOTAL INTERNAL REFLECTION
• At critical angle, refraction no longer occurs
• thereafter, you get total internal reflection
n2sin2 = n1sin1  crit = sin1(n1/n2)
• for glass, the critical internal angle is 42°
• for water, it’s 49°
• a ray within the higher index medium cannot escape at shallower angles (look at sky from
underwater…)

incoming ray hugs surface

n1 = 1.0
42° n2 = 1.5

Winter 2012 26
REFRACTION OF LIGHT. TOTAL INTERNAL REFLECTION

Credits:Thomson Brooks/Cole © 2004

Credits:Thomson Brooks/Cole © 2004

TOTAL INTERNAL REFLECTION. APPLICATION. OPTICAL FIBERS

A flexible and transparent fiber made by glass or plastic

Fiber- Multimode
bundle fiber
OPTICAL FIBERS

Non-coherent fibers: the relative

spatial coordinates are not maintained.

Coherent fibers: the relative spatial

coordinates of each fibers are the same at
the two ends of the bundle
OPTICAL FIBERS. ENDOSCOPES
WAVE OPTICS

Interference
Diffraction Light as
Dispersion waves

Polarization
COLOUR

• White light is not a single colour; it is made up of a

mixture of the seven colours of the rainbow.

We can demonstrate this by

splitting white light with a
prism:

This is how rainbows are formed:

sunlight is “split up” by raindrops.
THE COLOURS OF THE RAINBOW

• Red
• Orange
• Yellow
• Green
• Blue
• Indigo
• Violet
 DIFFRACTION
Another property that light exhibits is that it diffracts,
which loosely speaking means it bends around the
corner when it passes through an opening.
 INTERFERENCE

The final property of light to discuss is

interference, a phenomenon that occurs when
two light beams meet.

If the two beams enhance each other to give a

brighter beam, it is called constructive
interference

If they beams interfere in a way that makes the

total beam less bright, it is called destructive
interference.
INTERFERENCE
A FLY IN THE OINTMENT
 SO, WHAT IS LIGHT?

Light consists of a varying electric

and magnetic field
 WHAT IS LIGHT

Light is a special type of wave

What we know as light or VISIBLE
LIGHT is actually a type of something
called ELECTROMAGNETIC
RADIATION.
So, what is electromagnetic radiation
and electromagnetic waves?

Credits:Thomson Brooks/Cole © 2004

 ELECTROMAGNETIC WAVES

• Electrons in materials are vibrated and emit energy in

the form of photons, which propagate across the
universe.
• Photons have no mass, but are pure energy.
• Electromagnetic Waves are waves that are made up of
these “photons”.
• When these photons come in contact with boundaries,
E-M waves interact like other waves would.

Credits:Thomson Brooks/Cole © 2004

LIGHT IS PACKETS OF ENERGY CALLED PHOTONS
ELECTROMAGNETIC WAVES
• Electromagnetic waves are everywhere.
• Light is only a small part of them

– Radios – Radiation
– TVs – Lasers
– Microwaves – CD/DVD players
– Light (Visible/UV/InfraRed) – X-Rays

© 2003 MIKE MALONEY 43

COOL THING ABOUT LIGHT

 It can be thought of as both a particle and a

wave, so called “particle-wave duality”

 Lower energy (longer wavelength) light acts

predominately like a wave

 High energy (shorter wavelength) light acts

predominately like a particle
Polarization of Light
C

• An ordinary beam of light consists of

a large number of waves emitted by
the atoms of the light source.

• The direction of polarization of each

individual wave is defined to be the
direction in which the electric field is
vibrating.

• A light wave that is vibrating in

more than one plane is referred
to as unpolarized light.
 Polarization of Light
Polarization can be achieve by:
• Selective Absorption : use a material that transmits waves
whose electric fields vibrate in a
plane parallel to a certain direction
(e.g. Polaroid filters)
• Reflection
• Double Refraction: use materials characterized by two
indices of refraction called
birefringent materials (e.g.
optical stress analysis)
• Scattering
 POLARIZED LIGHT

• We cannot detect the

polarization of light very
well
• But some animals can
see polarized light
• Many insects, octopi and
mantis shrimps
Polarization of Light. Selective Absorption
A number of crystalline materials
absorb more light in one incident plane
than another
This anisotropy in absorption is
called dichroism
Polaroid is the trade name for the most
commonly used dichroic material

Credits:Thomson Brooks/Cole © 2004

Polarization of Light. Double Refraction

Unpolarized light incident on

a calcite crystal splits into an
ordinary (O) ray and an
extraordinary (E) ray. These
two rays are polarized in
perpendicular directions
Credits:Thomson Brooks/Cole © 2004

A point source S inside a double-

refracting crystal produces a spherical
wave front corresponding to the O ray
and an elliptical wave front
corresponding to the E ray.
Polarization of Light. Double Refraction

Some materials, such as glass

and plastic, become
birefringent when stressed.

Credits: Polymer Composites · December © 2018

Credits:Thomson Brooks/Cole © 2004

© 2003 MIKE MALONEY 51