What causes light to bend when passing the edges of objects?

[IrshadAlam]

I know the concept of diffraction of light, but not yet understood why light should bend passing the edges of objects ! I mean what makes it bend?

 

[NobodySpecial]

It doesn't bend as such - the light is spreading out in all directions, diffraction just causes some of the light that was around the corner to be added constructively while some of the light that was going straight-on is destructed.

 

[Idoubt]

To understand this you have to think of light as a wave and not a ray. For example suppose you have a tub of water and you place some sort of wooden surface vertically in it with a slit.

If you disturb the water you will see waves propagating in all directions on the surface.

When the waves hit the wood it will pass through the slit, but it won't emerge through the slit on the other side as a straight line, it will still spread in concentric circles ( well semi-circles ) on the other side of the surface with the slit as the centre.

I believe some experiments like this can be seen on youtube have a look it might help

 

[granpa]

each part of the wave front acts as a wave generator.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huygens–Fresnel_principle

edit:Immediately after posting this I did a google seach and this post was the first result.
http://www.google.com/search?q="+each+part+of+the+wave+front"+wave+generator

Cause of Diffraction of Light
4 posts - 4 authors - Last post: 24 seconds ago
To understand this you have to think of light as a wave and not a ray. ... each part of the wave front acts as a wave generator. ...
www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=2900666

24 seconds after posting this it was already in google search results.

 

[IrshadAlam]

To understand this you have to think of light as a wave and not a ray. For example suppose you have a tub of water and you place some sort of wooden surface vertically in it with a slit.

If you disturb the water you will see waves propagating in all directions on the surface.

When the waves hit the wood it will pass through the slit, but it won't emerge through the slit on the other side as a straight line, it will still spread in concentric circles ( well semi-circles ) on the other side of the surface with the slit as the centre.

The water waves are made up of material where as light waves are electromagnetic waves. So that can't be example of diffraction.

 

[Andy Resnick]

The water waves are made up of material where as light waves are electromagnetic waves. So that can't be example of diffraction.

Why do you think (surface) water waves don't diffract? what about sound waves?

 

[Idoubt]

Other than the fact that its electric and magnetic vectors oscillating for light and particles for waves there is no fundamental difference.

The main point is that all waves show this property. And when light is viewed as an electric and magnetic waves perpendicular to each other explains diffraction.

The interference pattern which is shown in young's double slit experiment comes from the path difference of two rays of light, ie for a dark spot the electric vector of one ray is in the opposite direction as the electric vector of the other.

Even for sound waves this happens. If you have two speakers there are acoustic "sweet spots" where the sound is max and also silent points

 

[IrshadAlam]

I have never said that water waves and sound waves don't diffract.
But their properties are different and the properties of light are very much different.

water waves diffract because of property of fluid that when they touch the edge of an object there is a phenomenon of adhesion with the edge of object and hence they bent towards the direction of object.

Regarding sound waves, the waves travel by striking the medium. And so when there is an object in their path they strike to that object also and the sound is scattered through every direction.

This can't be similar to light waves. Because light waves neither have adhesion properties nor they strike to the medium in their way.
There is only waves and photons traveling, when we say light is propagating.

In the Hyugen's double slit model, its only explained how the diffraction occurs and not WHY the waves bent while passing through an edge of an object.

There may be lack in my knowledge of laws but please try to understand my point.

 

[Andy Resnick]

I have never said that water waves and sound waves don't diffract.
But their properties are different and the properties of light are very much different.

water waves diffract because of property of fluid that when they touch the edge of an object there is a phenomenon of adhesion with the edge of object and hence they bent towards the direction of object.

Regarding sound waves, the waves travel by striking the medium. And so when there is an object in their path they strike to that object also and the sound is scattered through every direction.

This can't be similar to light waves. Because light waves neither have adhesion properties nor they strike to the medium in their way.
There is only waves and photons traveling, when we say light is propagating.

In the Hyugen's double slit model, its only explained how the diffraction occurs and not WHY the waves bent while passing through an edge of an object.

There may be lack in my knowledge of laws but please try to understand my point.

I think you are confusing mechanisms with properties.

Surface water waves are indeed caused by interfacial energy- that's why spreading oil on water abolishes surface waves. And sound waves are indeed caused by variations in the density of a compressible medium.

But diffraction is a property of waves- not the constituent particles. Diffraction is caused by the spatial truncation of a wavefront.

 

[IrshadAlam]

I think you are confusing mechanisms with properties.

Surface water waves are indeed caused by interfacial energy- that's why spreading oil on water abolishes surface waves. And sound waves are indeed caused by variations in the density of a compressible medium.

But diffraction is a property of waves- not the constituent particles. Diffraction is caused by the spatial truncation of a wavefront.

That's not my query.
Please could anyone tell me that why should light bend towards a specific direction when it passes through an edge of an object?

 

[Idoubt]

That's not my query.
Please could anyone tell me that why should light bend towards a specific direction when it passes through an edge of an object?

Light doesn't bend around an object, it spreads. A slit is simply 2 edges after all.

I don's understand why you are insisting that the wave nature of light and that of waves propagating through mediums have to different. The means of propagation is different but that doesn't change the nature of the wave.

 

[cragar]

You could explain diffraction in terms of the uncertainty principle .
If we try to force light through a small opening, we know to well where its at so we get an uncertainty in its momentum and it starts to spread out .

 

[Born2bwire]

You could explain diffraction in terms of the uncertainty principle .
If we try to force light through a small opening, we know to well where its at so we get an uncertainty in its momentum and it starts to spread out .

I do not think that works since diffraction is an established macroscopic classical property. The properties that give rise to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle are not present in the physics or mathematics of classical wave physics. However, classical wave physics are able to properly describe diffraction. Not to mention the fact that we do not need a hole for diffraction, a wedge is perfectly suitable.

One way to look at it classically is from the induced source perspective. The electromagnetic wave, when it impinges upon the scatterer, induces currents on the surface and inside the scatterer. If we are using plane waves as our incident field and if the scatterer was an infinite perfectly conducting plane, then the induced currents would be line currents running parallel to each other. Now if we were to suddenly truncate this plane, that would mean that at the corner edge, we have a single line current running along the edge. This current element will send out a cylindrical wave in all directions since it is not reflected (mixing a bit here, technically if we think about it as a source picture then we ignore the presence of the scatterer and just place the currents in the homogeneous background) back by the presence of the scattering plate. Now, once we take into account all of the currents together, we find that far from the edge in the middle of the plate the currents make a reflecting plane wave and on the other side a plane wave that cancels out the incident wave. This is done by the phase differences in the excited currents that work together to cancel out the radiation on the other side. But at the edge, we no longer have currents on both sides of our edge current. Thus, the edge current's contribution on the other side of the plate is not canceled out and we see this as the diffracted field.

So a very rough picture of the problem is that the induced currents on the plate cause specular reflection of the plane wave. But at the edge, since we do not have a continuum of currents to cancel out the radiation from the edge current on the shadow side of the plate, the edge current puts out a cylindrical wave that is only partially cancelled. The cylindrical part radiates out as the diffracted contribution.

 

[jtbell]

I do not think that works since diffraction is an established macroscopic classical property. The properties that give rise to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle are not present in the physics or mathematics of classical wave physics.

In fact, they are. From Fourier analysis, a wave packet (whether classical or quantum-mechanical) must obey the relationship

$$\Delta x \Delta k \ge \frac{1}{2}$$

In QM this becomes the HUP via $p = \hbar k$.

 

[Born2bwire]

In fact, they are. From Fourier analysis, a wave packet (whether classical or quantum-mechanical) must obey the relationship

$$\Delta x \Delta k \ge \frac{1}{2}$$

In QM this becomes the HUP via $p = \hbar k$.

But this creates a problem because we experience diffraction with monochromatic plane waves. When we talk about the diffraction patterns that arise in quantum mechanics via the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, the examples generally do so under the auspices of a particle like the electron or photon. In this case we relate the position and momentum of the particle and we describe the resulting diffraction in terms of its wavefunction. But how do we relate this to a problem that isn't localized in space and remains monochromatic?

If we are talking about the Fourier analysis, then we are relating the spatial domain with that of the wavenumber. In this case the localization of the wave results in a wave packet that must be produced by a bandwidth of frequencies. That isn't what happens with the a slit source because the transmitted wave is still monochromatic. This is due to the fact that we can use a plane wave source (or other similar infinite source) which allows us to have a Fourier transform that is a delta function regardless of how we constrain it in space via scatterers.

 

[Andy Resnick]

But this creates a problem because we experience diffraction with monochromatic plane waves.

Be careful- we do not observe diffraction from a monochromatic *plane* wave- a plane wave extends to +/- infinity in the transverse direction. We *do* observe diffraction from a monochromatic wave that consists of a plane wave truncated by an aperture.

 

[Born2bwire]

Be careful- we do not observe diffraction from a monochromatic *plane* wave- a plane wave extends to +/- infinity in the transverse direction. We *do* observe diffraction from a monochromatic wave that consists of a plane wave truncated by an aperture.

You do not need an aperture to diffract the wave. You can have a finite plate or wedge and still achieve diffraction. Making it an infinite object of course makes it much easier to calculate a solution or approximate one (ie. UTD, Sommerfeld half-plane solution, etc.) but the diffraction is a localized effect. We can easily create a finite scatterer and observe the typical diffraction behavior and doing so is a common problem in modeling high frequency scattering.

EDIT: Or perhaps you are misunderstanding my meaning. For example, Idoubt posted a picture of what I would consider is the diffraction of a monochromatic plane wave due to an infinite half-plane perfect electrical conductor (a problem that Sommerfeld solved almost a century ago and is of particular interest to us since a half-plane represents an interesting problem for a finite plate diffraction approximation).

 

[Idoubt]

These two lectures should give you a better idea about diffraction

The first one shows the classical approach and the second one the quantum mechanical





MIT OCW lectures are the best I've ever seen btw, it will be definitely worth your while to see as many of them as you can.

 

[Andy Resnick]

You do not need an aperture to diffract the wave. You can have a finite plate or wedge and still achieve diffraction.
[snip]
EDIT: Or perhaps you are misunderstanding my meaning.

we could be misunderstanding each other. A plane wave (that is, a solution e^ikz or e^ikr) formally has infinite extent and so does not diffract. We agree that when this is not the case: aperture, scatterer, 1/2 plane screen, etc, diffraction occurs. Bessel beams are another example of a non-diffracting field, but one that has finite spatial extent.

 

[Born2bwire]

we could be misunderstanding each other. A plane wave (that is, a solution e^ikz or e^ikr) formally has infinite extent and so does not diffract. We agree that when this is not the case: aperture, scatterer, 1/2 plane screen, etc, diffraction occurs. Bessel beams are another example of a non-diffracting field, but one that has finite spatial extent.

Ok then, yeah we are just misunderstanding.

 

[IrshadAlam]

Dear Born2 I think you all are explaining Diffraction of light as simply scattering of light into
infinite planes when incident with an edge of an object. But I have seen some extraordinary
property of light which combines both refraction of light as well as diffraction of light.
I personally think there is a need of a greater research in properties of light comprising refraction and diffraction. I personally think!

 

[sophiecentaur]

The same Maths apply to any form of wave and diffraction is just the name we give to a common phenomenon.

If you introduce the question of Heisenberg then, for a monchromatic wave, the Energy / Momentum is know precisely - what can you then imply about a Position? When diffraction occurs I guess you have to assume that the obstruction has been there for an infinite time or there is some 'modulation' of part of the wave front. Confusing if you think in terms of the photons all being there all the time and moving through space. Not so confusing if you think in terms of waves and then say that the photons aren't really 'there' except when the interactions of source or detector occur.

 

[IrshadAlam]

Confusing if you think in terms of the photons all being there all the time and moving through space. Not so confusing if you think in terms of waves and then say that the photons aren't really 'there' except when the interactions of source or detector occur.

How can you assume photons aren't there, in fact photons play an important role in both refraction and diffraction

 

[sophiecentaur]

When you say "in fact" I have to take issue. You may choose to describe diffraction in terms of photons but that is just a convenience on your part - as with all models of all phenomena and systems. Refraction and diffraction can be analysed very satisfactorily without considering photons so I see no reason to include them.
Of course, if you want to discuss the physical interaction of the em wave with the material of the obstruction then you may well be justified in introducing photons but, again, I hold that they need only be 'there' during the interaction. Fine details describing the effects at the edge of an aperture will be affected by the conductivity etc. of the material and it may be a good idea to discuss photon interactions there if you want to predict, accurately, what it going to happen. But that's still during the interaction and not whilst the wave is going from place to place.

 

[Born2bwire]

How can you assume photons aren't there, in fact photons play an important role in both refraction and diffraction

sophiecentaur pretty much stated what I also have been trying to say. Obviously since quantum electrodynamics is the most accurate theory we have for electromagnetism, using photons and quantum mechanics to describe diffraction and refraction should give correct results. However, I object to the idea of using the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle because I think it is unnecessarily confusing. In addition, diffraction can occur with a single edge and it becomes confusing to try and apply the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle to this since we now have a plane of semi-infinite size that the photon has to pass through (as opposed to an aperture which is finite in size in the plane of diffraction). So while it may be understandable with a finite aperture, the analog starts to breakdown in other situations. The proper treatment would be with the actual wavefunction and this takes into account wave-like physics like interference and diffraction automatically.

More importantly though, these effects are perfectly described by classical physics because we are still talking about macroscopic behavior. So there is no need to obfuscate the problem with quantum when we can describe it satisfactory using classical physics. Huygen's Principle is probably the easiest one to use but I think we can also look deeper with the equivalent source problem as well (though the exact details can be difficult but the concept is not too complex).

The same applies with refraction, this can be adequately described and predicted using classical treatment. A simple explanation for refraction is that the phase of the wave needs to be continuous across a boundary. That is, if we have an air-water boundary the phase of the wave should not change when we immediately go from air to water and vice-versa. Since the wavelength in water is different from that of air, the wave has to bend so that the phases of the wave above and below the interface match up.

 

[Gandi]

We have to do an assignment on things that manipulate light and i was wondering wheather or not i should do metamaterials. Is there enough information about metamaterials around? Is it a good subject to do it on?

If you can think about something better to do it on please inform me. Thank you

 

[IrshadAlam]

Since the wavelength in water is different from that of air, the wave has to bend so that the phases of the wave above and below the interface match up.

But bending is not The only option with the wave when trying to match the phases above and below.
Sorry for limited discussion here, because I am working up on it and can't explain without proper results; but here I would say that relying on Hyugen's principle in diffraction an Snell's Law in refraction does not troubleshoot the queries that arise in the minds of youngsters because it is a basic physics and experienced everyday.

There is a great need to study on quantum physics so as to understand the role of photons in both phenomena refraction and diffraction of light. I THINK

 

[Born2bwire]

But bending is not The only option with the wave when trying to match the phases above and below.
Sorry for limited discussion here, because I am working up on it and can't explain without proper results; but here I would say that relying on Hyugen's principle in diffraction an Snell's Law in refraction does not troubleshoot the queries that arise in the minds of youngsters because it is a basic physics and experienced everyday.

There is a great need to study on quantum physics so as to understand the role of photons in both phenomena refraction and diffraction of light. I THINK

What would you suggest instead of refraction to keep the phase continuity across the boundary? The refraction comes out naturally from the boundary conditions that arise with the vector wave equation. There actually isn't any need to introduce the physics into the derivation as it can be done intuitively with the math.

 

[IrshadAlam]

What would you suggest instead of refraction to keep the phase continuity across the boundary? The refraction comes out naturally from the boundary conditions that arise with the vector wave equation. There actually isn't any need to introduce the physics into the derivation as it can be done intuitively with the math.

I have not said there is other substitute to refraction but only for the reason that you said refraction would not occur.
we can also prove some unnatural and unreal things using mathematical equations, but in all that physics must not be ignored.
One example is that mathematically and with the help of figures I have a fake proof of exactly inverse of snells law and it says that velocity of light in water is higher than that of in air.(Just fake and I disbelieve it).
We will have to think sticking to physics and not mathematical equations.

 

[Born2bwire]

I have not said there is other substitute to refraction but only for the reason that you said refraction would not occur.
we can also prove some unnatural and unreal things using mathematical equations, but in all that physics must not be ignored.
One example is that mathematically and with the help of figures I have a fake proof of exactly inverse of snells law and it says that velocity of light in water is higher than that of in air.(Just fake and I disbelieve it).
We will have to think sticking to physics and not mathematical equations.

Then what is your objections to the explanations given previously? To whit, we have mentioned Huygen's Principle and Equivalence Source Principle to explain diffraction. For refraction we can explain it by the fact that boundary conditions require that the phase of the wave be continuous across the interface in addition to the fact that the wavelength changes as well.

 

[IrshadAlam]

Then what is your objections to the explanations given previously? To whit, we have mentioned Huygen's Principle and Equivalence Source Principle to explain diffraction. For refraction we can explain it by the fact that boundary conditions require that the phase of the wave be continuous across the interface in addition to the fact that the wavelength changes as well.

Please give me the textual material of latest mathematical proofs that you are telling about or just send me their links then I will explain you about my objections. Please Believe

 

[Born2bwire]

Please give me the textual material of latest mathematical proofs that you are telling about or just send me their links then I will explain you about my objections. Please Believe

Just about any electromagnetics textbook should be sufficient. For refraction you can look at say Balanis "Advanced Engineering Electromagnetics," Chew's "Fields and Waves in Inhomogeneous Media" or probably Kong's textbook as well. Balanis should be sufficient for diffraction as he has an entire chapter on the subject and of course I already made mention of Sommerfeld's treatment of the problem which is often used as a starting point in many diffractiont theories.

 

[sophiecentaur]

Please give me the textual material of latest mathematical proofs that you are telling about or just send me their links then I will explain you about my objections. Please Believe

These 'latest mathematical proofs' are pretty ancient and you can find them, as has been said, in so many established texts. That doesn't mean they're flawed, though. Explain your objection to those proofs first and show how introducing photons actually improves on them.
You will, of course, need to characterise the photon very fully, with regard to its extent, shape etc. and, possibly, how it will interact with other photons whilst it's going from A to B. You may find that a bit difficult.

 

[IrshadAlam]

These 'latest mathematical proofs' are pretty ancient and you can find them, as has been said, in so many established texts. That doesn't mean they're flawed, though. Explain your objection to those proofs first and show how introducing photons actually improves on them.
You will, of course, need to characterise the photon very fully, with regard to its extent, shape etc. and, possibly, how it will interact with other photons whilst it's going from A to B. You may find that a bit difficult.

Anyhow I can do that.

 

[sophiecentaur]

Go on then. There be dragons.

I'd have a problem doing it as I don't 'believe in photons' in the way that so many people do. I, of course, believe in the photoelectric effect and quantum mechanics etc. - but they are both concerned with interactions.