- #1
desertshaman
- 25
- 9
- TL;DR
- An amateur has dreamed of an innovation, and wants to debrief
Dear Physicists
I have imagined a kind of diffraction grating that I can’t find in the books or on the market, so I want to debrief and see what others think of it.
My Imaginary Grating (IG) is made of a set of perfectly white lands separated by deep, non-reflective cuts at a spacing determined by a simple trigonometric function. The result is that every adjacent land is separated from the next by a distance differential of 1 wavelength of light, with respect to the observer.
The 1-Dimensional IG
A 1-dimensional IG is attached as image 1. The observer sees the same wavelength of light reflected towards them from the entire length of the grating.
It is noted that a grating which similarly uniformly reflects light for a wavelength λ=600nm is simply scaled lengthwise, with similar scaling applied to the observer viewpoint.
The 2-dimensional IG
The 2-dimensional IG, attached as image 2, is made up of lands spaced according to the same formula as above, with parallel lands extending much wider than the grating is long. An expected effect of this arrangement is depicted in the plan view below.
Along a line through space, at a uniform distance from the grating and at a uniform height above the plane of the grating, the entire length of the grating uniformly reflects single wavelength light towards an observer.
One has naively imagined that the great resolution of such a diffracting surface might be useful in spectroscopy.
Thanks for your attention!
I have imagined a kind of diffraction grating that I can’t find in the books or on the market, so I want to debrief and see what others think of it.
My Imaginary Grating (IG) is made of a set of perfectly white lands separated by deep, non-reflective cuts at a spacing determined by a simple trigonometric function. The result is that every adjacent land is separated from the next by a distance differential of 1 wavelength of light, with respect to the observer.
The 1-Dimensional IG
A 1-dimensional IG is attached as image 1. The observer sees the same wavelength of light reflected towards them from the entire length of the grating.
It is noted that a grating which similarly uniformly reflects light for a wavelength λ=600nm is simply scaled lengthwise, with similar scaling applied to the observer viewpoint.
The 2-dimensional IG
The 2-dimensional IG, attached as image 2, is made up of lands spaced according to the same formula as above, with parallel lands extending much wider than the grating is long. An expected effect of this arrangement is depicted in the plan view below.
Along a line through space, at a uniform distance from the grating and at a uniform height above the plane of the grating, the entire length of the grating uniformly reflects single wavelength light towards an observer.
One has naively imagined that the great resolution of such a diffracting surface might be useful in spectroscopy.
Thanks for your attention!
